


Gifted Universe

by mutantsandmasterpieces



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, High School, No Smut, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-13 12:19:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 61,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5707858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutantsandmasterpieces/pseuds/mutantsandmasterpieces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>These first four chapters were written in 2012-13. We've recently picked the project up again.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Gifted

**Author's Note:**

> These first four chapters were written in 2012-13. We've recently picked the project up again.

The campus was quiet, but in that silence it was as majestic as Kurt Wagner knew it to be. "Do not get too used to the calm," he told the young Brazilian girl in his thick German accent. After a few years in America it had diluted only a little. "When everyone is back for school there will be friends for you everywhere." He smiled warmly, pleased he could do so without hiding his blue furred skin, expressive yellow eyes, and slightly pricked canine teeth.

The girl smiled back.

Professor Xavier rolled along in his wheelchair on the girl's other side. "Kurt is quite right, Amara, you will be joining a very…" he chuckled, "energetic community of friends and companions who share gifts like yours."

Kurt had to watch her mouth and turn his head to catch her timid speech. "They too make the earth to open?" she asked, not looking at either Kurt or the headmaster.

The Professor put his hand on the girl's small brown one. "No, but yours is just one of many wonderful gifts that can be found here. Several are just as powerful as yours, but in different ways."

Kurt was always impressed with his kindness and the talent Professor Xavier had for saying the right thing at the right time. When the girl met the Professor's eyes and her smile cautiously returned, Kurt was reminded of his own arrival.

The professor returned the smile and laid Amara's hand under his on the arm of his chair as he continued the tour.

Kurt happily followed them through the two levels of the double winged mansion, through the spacious public ground floor with its dark wood paneling, wrought iron fixtures and chandeliers giving off warm orange light, and comfy sitting areas decorated with provoking art from original paintings to china vases to fine sculpture.

"Everything you see here is for you," the professor said, showing Amara everywhere she'd soon learn to visit regularly. "When school begins again, you'll be living here with several others and still more will come after your classes from attending the high school."

"… The one they burned down?" Amara asked guiltily.

The Professor lowered his voice and rested his soft blue eyes on her round face. "Whoever put you in that gym wanted you to be blamed for the damage, but you were not at all to blame. We're still working on making contact with your parents, but until then you need to be strong with us. Can you do that?"

She slowly nodded and the Professor held her hand tighter.

"Come, I'll show you to your room."

Kurt followed them into the elevator in the middle of the first floor and rode up with them. He wished he could give the little girl some comfort, but he felt terribly inadequate to relate to her experience. He had been the one to discover her screaming in the corner of the collapsed and burning remains of Baywood High School's main gym. Thanks to his mutant talent of teleporting, he was able to snatch her from under the bleachers before they collapsed on top of her. The look on her face had been haunting and he stuck around to help her calm down not just to follow through on the rescue, but to be sure the expression was gone for good.

Amara looked around at the warm halls and peeked into the rooms with awe. "I have never seen such a lovely place…"

"It's your home now," the Professor said kindly. "And we will continue the tour of the grounds tomorrow." He pushed a door open. "This will be your room. There will be two more girls to share with you, but until then it's all yours. You can leave the light on and I'll leave someone outside your door to make sure no one can get you."

Kurt could see the girl's anxiety lift significantly. She suddenly hugged the Professor tight.

Kurt smiled at his hero and Xavier chuckled, once recovered from his surprise. He hugged her back. "Now you can draw a bath and get ready for bed. It's very late. You'll find some night clothes in the dresser."

Amara, thrilled and with a spring in her step, immediately ran into her room to search the dresser drawers.

"Kurt," the professor said privately while they watched the preteen press her cheek into the soft night gown and warm socks, "I'll be posting Jean as Amara's guard tonight, so you're free to return to Warren's. She's on her way back from Baywood."

He turned away from the girl's room. "What about the rest?" He hated to leave his friends at the flaming structure to bring Amara back and he felt out of the loop. "What have they discovered?"

The Professor took a moment, using his powers of telepathy to check in on his vigilante team of mutants. "Not much yet. Not even a source for the fire. Warren wants you to be careful on your way back home. The humans somehow got wind of Amara despite our best efforts. It's being considered a mutant attack."

Kurt's heart sank. "An… attack? Will Warren be alright?"

"They'll be fine, Kurt. For now, you need to get back to the Worthington estate and look after Piotr and Anna. Until this blows over, stay indoors as much as you can." He smiled a little to soften the blow. "Think of it as a rainy day."

In addition to Kurt's fur, glowing eyes, and pointed ears, he also sported animalistic legs and a spade tail which drooped now with regret. "Anna is not going to like that, sir. She hates board games."

The Professor smiled sadly. "Do your best, Kurt. If anyone finds out what you three are, you will be in a great deal of danger out on the streets. Stay at Warren's as a personal favor to me if nothing else."

Kurt sighed and nodded. "As you wish, Professor. Good night."

"Good night, Kurt."

In a cloud of blue sulfur smoke and with a loud "BAMF", Kurt disappeared from the hall in the manor and reappeared in a tree several hundred yards outside the regal, vine-wrapped mansion house.

After another moment, he bamfed again and reappeared in the grounds of a neighboring estate. To seek his next landing place and potentially his target, Kurt gave an acrobatic leap and swung with great skill from his tree to a taller one nearby, silent except for the rustling of a few leaves and the soft whip of his tail that balanced his landing. Like a true creature of the night, Kurt shuffled up the tree with sure hands and feet, peering into the distance toward another large estate and bamfed three more times. Once he reappeared on a diving board of an Olympic sized private pool and amused himself with a spring loaded leap before teleporting again. He wasn't so lucky that time. He landed on a garden fence right in front of a guard dog's weather-proofed kennel. The animal barely had time to bark before Kurt disappeared, leaving the bewildered beast to the scolding of a sleepy master.

When he reappeared a split second later, Kurt landed on a fountain carved with angels and crouched there, a demon, peering up gratefully at a house lit up and bright with light from inside which streamed out through huge glass windows everywhere they could be fit in. Kurt bamfed inside the main foyer and straightened up, dusting off leaves and some dust from his adventure on the way back.

All through the house the ceilings were high and the staircases as open as they could get. Kurt could hear a piano concerto echoing through the vaulted halls and rooms and he quickly looked at his watch. There was a clock on a small table right next to him, but he wasn't checking the time. With a quick adjustment, the watch whirred and clicked and in a moment Kurt's devilish appearance was hidden behind a visual projection of a normal looking boy with his facial features but conventional pink skin and scruffy black hair. His clothes also changed appearance, turning his smoky, charred Institute Uniform into baggy cargo pants and a t-shirt.

At times Kurt despised his image-inducer, but on innumerable occasions he thanked God for it and the freedom it allowed him to avoid detection as a mutant in the intolerant world of ignorant and fearful humans. At this point he was grateful and he tried to speed up his walk as he passed by the music room where the piano was the loudest.

It suddenly stopped. "Oh! Hello Kurt!"

He flinched and was forced to pause and shoot a small smile into the room. "Hello, Fräulein Kate."

Kate Farnsworth stood from behind the piano, a slender and perfectly pretty blonde who stood a short 5' 4". Her hair was always perfect, no matter what, and there was something plastically crisp about her immaculate complexion, manicured nails, and multitude of domestic talents. His stomach turned to see yet another well-tailored, pressed, cotton print dress that hung perfectly, just above her knees.

She smiled at him. "Kurt, I didn't see you at dinner. Are you hungry?"

Kurt knew that although Kate cooked masterful meals, she would insist he not eat alone. He knew he could have no appetite at the table with her there, so he lied. "No, thank you."

Her pretty face fell, but a smile was soon restored itself, if a little dimmed. "Well neither were Anna and Piotr. I'm not sure where they've gotten to, but I'm glad to see you. Would you like to sing with me? I know a few" –

Kurt fidgeted. "No, but thank you. I need to… go." He couldn't look directly at her and took a step backward further out the door.

Kate cocked her head slightly and her wavy blonde hair gave a subtle bounce that infuriated him. He hated himself for it. "Go?"

He thought up an excuse and bobbed a little on his feet. "I need to go. Go."

Kate blushed and laughed. It was musical and his stomach twisted angrily. "Oh! I'm sorry. Go. I didn't mean to keep you."

Kurt bobbed his head in gratitude and hurried off as if he were, indeed, hurrying to the bathroom, but instead he waited in the hall until her concerto began again and then hurried to the big white-tiled kitchen.

When he got to the door, he faced a huge obstacle. His nearly seven foot tall friend Piotr Rasputin was standing with his back to the doorway, effectively though unintentionally blocking all possibility of getting past.

Piotr was thinking out loud, and obviously still thinking in his native language and having to channel his meaning through English. "But the woman on the television said mutants caused the explosion…"

Though Kurt couldn't see her, he could certainly hear his adoptive sister Anna as she clattered around the kitchen with her warm Mississippi accent.

"Y'don't trust news folks, Piotr!" she replied. "Think she's a mutant?"

"Well… no?"

"No," Anna said firmly. "No, because, Piotr, we don't get on the TV."

Piotr was quiet for a moment, oblivious to Kurt trying to peek around him to squeeze into the room. "But Warren is on the television all the time."

Anna sighed. "Because nobody knows Warren's a mutant. If they did, we'd be seein' his name all up on every gossip paper in the country, but never sayin' nothin' good."

Piotr's usual smile disappeared in a frown. "There is nothing bad about Warren!"

"That's exactly what ah'm sayin', Piotr," Anna said, nodding. "News folks always pick out the worst in people, 'specially us."

He nodded sagely. "Yes. They should instead be talking about the bad mutant who blew up the high school!"

Anna stared at him a second in disbelieving silence. "Piotr! Weren't you listening?!"

He looked back at her innocently. "…to what?"

She slapped his arm with a dishtowel, but it was about as effective at harming him as a tickle.

Kurt, having found no way around Piotr's broad back, teleported into the kitchen.

Piotr smiled and Anna was the only one who jumped.

"Kurt!" she snapped. "Why do you gotta give me a heart attack whenever you make an entrance?" She smiled, though. She was a curvy brunette with long sleeves, grunge-style layering, and vintage gloves up to her elbows whose white color set off a streak of white hair at her forehead. "Took you long enough. What really happened at the school?"

"The news said a mutant did it," Piotr said. "We have been watching the news to see if we could see Warren at the scene."

"If we did our job right," Kurt replied, "then none of us should be on the television. Besides, I was only there for rescue, not search or investigation."

Anna took a large, full Tupperware from the refrigerator. "So there was a rescue?"

Kurt took a seat at the granite-topped island and Piotr soon did too. "Yes. The Professor sensed a mutant in the wreckage, but she was barely awake. We found her in the first few minutes and I teleported her to the van and we were driven home."

"Her?" Anna asked, dishing up generous portions of the meal on three plates.

"Did she destroy the school?" Piotr asked.

Kurt shook his head. "No. We believe she was planted there. She is hardly twelve years old. Her name is Amara."

Anna's face fell and she paused before putting the first plate in the microwave. "Oh! The poor lil' thing!"

"The last thing she remembers is being at home in Brazil, and then waking in the burning gym…"

Anna punched the numbers into the microwave fiercely. "Damn criminals, tryin' t'frame a little girl! She's just a kid!"

Piotr mirrored her angry expression, but his was colored with confusion. "Could she have been made to destroy the school?"

"Forced?" Kurt asked then shook his head. "No. She has volcanic powers. If she had even accidentally caused damage to the school, it would be through fissures and lava. This was purely flame. There was no disturbance of the ground at all."

Anna continued heating up the plates of food and the kitchen began to carry a fresh and savory smell. "What did the others think?"

"Warren did a couple of flyovers to see if he could find anyone hiding to see the outcome of the attack, but he did not find anything," he said sadly. "Storm rained out the fire so Cyclops and Jean could look for any other victims."

Piotr accepted his plate with a polite, "Thank you" before looking back at Kurt attentively. "An explosion like that could hurt a lot of people. School starts next week. If they intended to terrorize the town of Bayville, why did they not wait until the gym was full of students?" He shrugged self-consciously. "…not that it would be a good thing at all…"

"It's okay, Piotr," Anna said, bringing over her and Kurt's plates, "Ah was askin' myself the same thing."

Kurt took his fork and held it, thinking. "They might not have meant to do that much harm… The Professor says the atmosphere for us out in the city is very hostile. It could be that whoever has done this thing wants Bayville to fear us."

Anna snorted, clattering a stool as she hauled it over to sit on. "Hate us is more like. Not like they all need that much help with that!"

Kurt shrugged sadly and finally looked at his plate. "Wow…"

Anna sighed and took a bite. "Yeah. Coque au Vin. Ah texted Remy t'ask what the hell it is. Says it's chicken."

Piotr already had his mouth full and he swallowed, smiling. "I like it! Ms. Kate is almost better in the kitchen than my mother."

Anna glowered at him, picking at her plate. "How dare you, Piotr? She's a human."

"My mother? Of course she is."

"No! I mean Barbie Kate!" Anna snapped.

"Oh… But she is very nice. And she makes delicious food. And plays beautiful music."

Anna frowned more. "Careful, Piotr, or ah may think you're goin' to the dark side."

Piotr swallowed with difficulty, looking away from Anna's livid eyes.

"She really is not a bad person, Anna," Kurt said slowly, staring at his meal of tender chicken and flavorful sauce. "Piotr can like her if he wants to."

She glared at him. "'Not a bad person'? Says the Preacher about the Barbie in Warren's bed."

Kurt stabbed the chicken on his plate. "Anna there is no need to be so vulgar."

"Ah could've said a lot worse than that," she smiled evilly.

Piotr made a face. "Please do not get worse."

Kurt sighed, unable to look up at his sister's face. "I cannot be upset with Warren for seeking companionship…"

"Female companionship," Anna specified. "You say you can't, but you are. And Ah think you'd be more upset if he was lookin' for another blue-furred kid to stay in his house over the summer."

Kurt dropped his fork. "I am not jealous over Warren!"

Anna smirked a little, having gotten a rise out of him. "Of course not. That'd be a deadly sin."

"Anna," Piotr said, "that is a very unkind thing to say."

She smiled innocently. "Ah'm just tryin' to make a point that Barbie could make even my sainted brother swear."

Kurt's human image flushed in annoyance, but that just made it even harder to deny Anna's point was a good one. "They have only been dating a couple of months…"

"Things work different here in New York than they do in the Bible, Preacher," Anna said. "'Round here three dates is enough."

Kurt's stomach soured and he pushed away his plate. "I just have a hard time believing she is good for him. She calls him all the time. She demands never to be alone… She is not helping him to be himself at all. She is holding him back and God forgive me if it is a sin to be concerned for my finest friend's choice in women!"

"That is not a sin," Piotr said, concerned.

Anna shrugged. "Ah'll betcha she's somethin' his snobby daddy 'Dr. Warren Worthington II' thought would be good for his shameful mutant son. What could be better for the golden son of Worthington Industries than a prissy lil' trophy wife clingin' to his arm? Might be to take people's eyes off his bulky back under that silly lookin' trench coat hidin' his wings."

Kurt stared at her, hating how much her guess made sense. Warren's father made his living trying to contain, and/or cure the growing mutant "problem" as politicians had been referring to it, and, being the head of a billion dollar company, it was a constant struggle for him to keep Warren's angel-wing mutation a secret.

"But," Piotr said, "this summer we have seen Warren smile a lot more. And she would not still be here if he did not like her. She is very pretty… and close to him. They are definitely good friends."

Anna suddenly sat up and pointed at the windows behind them. "He's home!"

Kurt turned just in time to see Warren, his wide white wings spread in the moonlight, glide past the large bay windows of the kitchen. With two powerful wing beats, he gained altitude and disappeared out of view. "He is going to the back door!"

"Bet he can tell us more 'bout the school!" Anna said and they scrambled to get the dishes into the sink and rinsed.

It was in times like these that Kurt wished he could teleport around the house, but with Kate there, power use was off-limits so she wouldn't see them. They rushed as fast as they could to the back door, but by the time they entered the hall, they could already hear they'd been beaten to him.

"Warren!" Kate's voice was saying, full of concern. "Look at your clothes! Are you alright? You weren't anywhere near that attack, were you? You could have been hurt! Or attacked! You could have called me!"

Anna peeked around to spy on them despite Kurt poking her with his tail. "That is rude, Anna!"

She slapped his tail spade away. "Since when has that ever stopped me?"

Kurt was about to reply, but instead joined her at the corner, taking a place just under her while Piotr peeked curiously out from a spot on the corner above both of them.

Warren had found time to put his street clothes on over his uniform, but his white shirt had soot on it from the fire, as did his folded wings and blonde hair. He held Kate's narrow shoulders and made her look at him. "Katie! I'm alright, see? I'm fine. I wasn't hurt, or attacked. I was at the lab, just like I said." He smiled, a handsome smile by any standard.

She didn't buy it for a second. "You smell like fire. And you look like you've been cleaning a chimney, Warren. Please don't lie to me."

He sighed and let her go. "Fine. I might have, maybe, gone to look over the school… But I didn't do anything more than that. And I was perfectly safe."

Kurt watched Kate sigh and finally smile just a little. "Fine."

"And yes, I could have called and I didn't," Warren said, pleased to see she wasn't upset anymore. "I'm sorry for that. I figured you'd be alright with the kids here with you."

"They don't like me at all, Warren," she said.

Anna smiled.

"Except Piotr."

Piotr smiled and Anna elbowed him, but he was unaffected.

"You don't know that, Katie," Warren said, hanging up his coat. "I told you, they're just teenagers. They don't like anyone."

Kate folded her arms. "They love you. They really don't like me." She put a hand up to stop his reply. "Please, Warren, I don't want to argue about this. This wasn't the point." She smiled a little, gentler. "I just mean it gets lonely, even when the kids are here. But I appreciate you not leaving me alone. It means a lot."

Anna mumbled under her breath venomously. "Look at her, just reelin' him in… Playin' all of those mind games…"

"She went to school for psychiatry," Kurt reminded her, bothered too.

Piotr was confused. "But she is just being nice… Should not everyone be that understanding?"

Kurt didn't like to hear that. It got him wondering how badly he was behaving.

Warren, not hearing them, nodded. "I'm sorry, Katie… I'll do what I can to keep in better contact, but I can't be on call all day. I have too much to do."

"I'm not asking to be on speaker phone with you all day," she said sarcastically. "I just want to hear from you at lunch, and to know when you're coming back. That's all. I'll try to handle it the rest of the day."

"Deal."

Piotr whispered again. "Have they kissed yet? Or have we missed it?"

Kurt looked at him in surprise. "Piotr!"

"I just have not seen a couple not kiss in greeting, especially when she was worried."

Anna agreed. "If they're really all hot on each other, he'd be practically sucking her lips off."

Kurt made a face. "Just because you wish Remy were here and that he could do that does not mean anything."

"They just don't look in love, Kurt," Anna snapped defensively. "That's all Ah'm sayin'."

"Anna," Piotr said, "they have finished speaking…"

Kurt looked back and sure enough Kate left Warren's side heading toward the kitchen, and Warren immediately turned to look at them. Kurt's heart sank. "He knew we were here the whole time…"

Anna quickly pulled out of view as Warren started to walk over. "Well he knows you were here!" She started to sneak off, but Warren's voice stopped her.

"Anna, I know you're there!"

She stopped and sighed, folding her arms over her chest to face him as he stood in front of them. "So what?"

He was a relatively tall man and his large, furled wings thickened his lean silhouette. "'So what'? 'So', I didn't leave you all at home to ignore Kate. Didn't you eat with her?"

"No," Piotr said.

It hurt Kurt to see Warren's expression and he hung his head.

"How many times do I have to explain that she is monophobic?" he asked. He didn't usually get mad, but Kurt's chest got tight and he couldn't make words for how badly it felt to have a man who was so much like family show disappointment in him.

"She's just clingy!" Anna retorted.

"She is not," Warren said. "She is diagnosed and everything. She needs people around, and not people who avoid her!"

Anna sulked, but kept quiet.

"But I do know that she needs some things that make it hard to deal," Warren admitted. "But you all only have a week left before you'll be moving back into the Institute for school."

"Bayville will still open on time?" Kurt asked, surprised.

"Yes, they're just shutting down the main gym until it can be fixed," Warren explained. "The school board was planning to renovate the gym anyway so at this point they're just planning to move up the renovation schedule."

Piotr smiled. "That is good, then!"

"That's the school's way of staying out of the mutant question," Warren said. "The city is in an uproar. It's not safe for any of us out there. It's being advised to everyone to stay indoors and not to leave for anything just in case they're mistaken for mutants."

Anna glowered. "Great! Now we're stuck here!"

Warren smiled wryly. "At the beginning of the summer you begged to come here."

"That was before she found out she is ordered to stay," Kurt said. He smiled at his sister.

She frowned and rolled her eyes. "Fine. Whatever."

Warren caught and held their eyes. "This is not a 'whatever' situation. This is serious. If you go out there, you will be hurt. Others will be hurt. And, worse, you may give away the whole Institute."

Kurt stared, sure he hadn't ever seen Warren looking this serious.

Warren made sure each of them could understand. "If that happens there won't be anywhere for anyone to go. You stay inside. Professor Xavier's orders."

Kurt nodded with Anna and Piotr. He intended to listen, too. He fully meant to stay out of the way, to keep busy, and to just keep his head down with the others until the end of the week when they could pack up their things and move into the Institute where all of Charles Xavier's hand-picked mutant children stayed for the school year.

Anna, however, got cabin fever after the first day and was testing their 'prison' by the third.

Kurt kept a close eye on her and reminded her of the dangers whenever she started to nonchalantly make for an exit, or try to convince Piotr to help her break out. Thankfully Piotr had no interest in doing anything against Warren and the Professor, so she usually ended up in the garden or up in her room on the phone complaining to someone who'd listen.

It was hard for all of them, Kurt was sure. Well, not quite sure. Piotr seemed almost to be enjoying himself. Warren had given him as many blank canvases and paint as he could ever dream of in his small farming town in Russia and he seemed to have more inspiration than he knew what to do with. Painting upon painting came from his brush and he spent hours in the garden with his tall easel, canvases, and palate.

Kurt had a view of the fruitful garden from his own personal sanctuary; a large out-building that had been converted into a gym. It was huge with high ceilings, built initially for Warren to practice taking off and landing away from prying eyes. Kurt's favorite things about it were the several hundred different hand and foot holds all over the walls and ceiling.

Where Piotr had been brought to the United States only a year before, Kurt had been there for two. He'd left behind Germany and an adoptive family in a famous circus. It was there he'd developed his acrobatic talents, and he worked hard to keep them up. Not only for the circus, but also for whatever might be asked of him at Xavier's Institute.

He was just finishing an ambitious routine, his image inducer off. He noticed Anna had stopped working with her heavy punching bag and was staring out the door of the gym.

He bamfed down to look over her shoulder. "What is it, Anna?"

She pointed, frowning. "Look at that…"

Piotr wasn't alone in his garden. Kate had joined him, all dressed up for an event she and Warren were going to later. She was even leaning in to apparently compliment his brush strokes.

Anna wasn't pleased. "Look at him… Totally sucked in."

Kurt sighed, tail swishing uncertainly. "Well he is nicer to her than we are. We cannot blame her for warming up to him."

To Kurt's discomfort, Piotr was smiling and Kurt saw all the signs of his friend's simple bashfulness coming out, even from a distance.

Anna took off her workout gloves and pulled on her long elbow gloves before marching out toward them. "Well, enough of this."

"Anna? Do not do anything stupid! Anna?" Kurt turned on his inducer and hurried after her.

As they both got closer, they could hear Kate and Piotr talking and laughing. Kurt could see it infuriate Anna more, and he couldn't deny he felt protective of his closest companion.

"Hey!" Anna shouted, interrupting their discussion.

Kurt saw Anna get mad pretty often, but she was the kind that made a big deal when she got a little mad and was harder to defend against when she was really mad. It scared him to see that she wasn't advancing hunched over with fists clenched like a mad dog, but instead walked confidently forward with an unreadable, even expression.

Piotr looked up in surprise and even smiled and waved. "Hello, Anna!"

Kate, however, paled and took an uncertain half-step backward as if she could see right through the calm before the storm. "Hello, Kurt. Anna."

Anna smiled stiffly. "You a painting expert, Barbie?"

Kate frowned. "Anna, that is not my name."

"You ain't gonna answer my question? How rude…"

Piotr looked between them, nervous.

Kate cleared her throat. "Yes, I spent some time in art classes, and I like to visit galleries when I"-

"But are you an EX-PERT?" Anna interrupted, stepping forward, filling Kate's personal space.

Piotr looked at Kurt, afraid, and Kurt tried to quell his small thrill of enjoyment at seeing the apparent expert on everything put to the fire in order to realize Anna could do real damage. As mad as she was, Anna's powers would make a simple push, brush, or touch level the petite psychiatrist into deep comatose.

"No, I'm not an expert…"

Kurt began to squirm inside and he opened his mouth to intervene, but he didn't have to.

Anna grinned, opening her mouth to let fly something vicious, but her smile disappeared as Warren approached.

"Kate, are you ready to" – he paused, seeing them together. "What's going on?!"

To Kurt's surprise, Kate smiled as if nothing had been going on. "Nothing, Warren, it's alright. Yes, I'm ready. We can"-

Warren looked at them all, frowning. "No, it's not nothing. What did I tell all of you? Did I mumble?"

Piotr fiddled with his paint brush. "No, sir, you did not mumble."

Kate held up her hand only slightly to Piotr with a soft shake of her head.

"We didn' do nothin'," Anna said, throwing up a solid wall of denial.

Kurt couldn't even look at Warren. Warren was like an older brother to him, and Kurt had never had Warren mad at him this often ever.

Warren opened his mouth to confront her, but Kate caught hold of his elbow. He settled with a slow sigh and shook his head. When he looked at them again, he smiled almost wearily. "Nevermind. Just nevermind. We should be celebrating."

There was something odd about the expression on Warren's face and Kurt stared into it, worried. Anna blinked in confusion. She'd been prepared for a fight and was still flushed, frowning.

"What are we celebrating?" Piotr asked, relieved at the broken tension.

"Kate got a job!" Warren smiled, putting a hand on Kate's shoulder.

She was wearing the same smile as Warren and Kurt now watched her with interest. It had to be something she had done… Warren was acting far too strangely.

Piotr grinned. "Congratulations, Ms. Kate."

Anna glared at him.

"Thank you," Kate said. She looked up at Warren. "We should go or we'll miss the dinner."

"Right," he replied and hooked her hand onto his arm. "Remember, guys, stay here. Order pizza, set up a movie, whatever you like."

Piotr waved, smiling. "Enjoy your dinner."

Kate smiled warmly. "Thank you, Piotr."

Anna glowered as they left; Kate in her elegantly simple dress of fine fabric and Warren in his fine suit with his wings hidden effectively by their restraining harness and covered by his large coat. "Who the hell does she think she is?"

"Why must you dislike her so much?" Piotr demanded indignantly.

Anna whirled to face the nearly seven-foot tall artist, turning her ire toward him. "Do you see what she's doing to Warren? She's a damn shrink! A human shrink! She's got her twisted lil' mind tricks goin' in both of you! Y'think she actually cares about us?"

"She told me she works with mutant children, like us," Piotr said. "She wants to help others like us…"

Anna's fists clenched. "She can't! She ain't got no right t'even talk t'us, Piotr! She's just a damn do-gooder who thinks we're a problem they gotta solve!"

Anna's words appealed to Kurt as an explanation for the suspicions he had of Kate, and he felt himself wanting to believe the rest of it too.

"Well, there ain't no way Ah'm lettin' her have a night out, keepin' us inside," Anna fumed, marching back to the house.

"What?!" Kurt bamfed in her way. "We cannot go outside the estate!"

"Who says?" Anna demanded. "Warren. For all we know, its Barbie tellin' him t'tell us t'stay inside. She might be studyin' us like her lil' lab rats."

Piotr came over in concern. "She does not know we are mutants, Anna…"

"We don't know that!" Anna snapped. "Ah'm goin' to the movies with or without you two goats!"

Piotr blinked. "'Goats'?"

"Anna, please do not go out."

"You're not gonna stop me," Anna snapped, marching toward the mansion.

Kurt sighed. "Well in that case, I am coming with you. You cannot go alone."

"And I will not let the two of you go without me," Piotr insisted, quickly cleaning up his painting supplies and following them inside.

Anna was the only one of them who had a driver's license and had the nerve to "borrow" a car from Warren's garage without permission. Kurt made her swear it would return in perfect condition before he or Piotr got in. He made an amendment to the oath when Anna took them through a drive thru for cheeseburgers. If there was one thing Kurt had wished for while they were stuck on the estate it was a cheeseburger. That was one bribe he couldn't resist.

He was, however, observing the city as they passed. Bayville was a quiet, well-to-do town. It wasn't large, and very young in its population. Usually the night life was high for a town its size, but as they drove toward the mall on the other side of town, heading for the theater, the only people walking around were in groups of three or four and they all lurked in the shadows or scurried from streetlight to streetlight. There were no other cars on the streets. It worried him, but after the double-deluxe bacon cheeseburger with curly fries Kurt was far more open to discussing what movie to see.

With a whole theater nearly to themselves, a large order of popcorn for each of them, and an explosive adventure movie, Kurt was easily swept away. He was a movie-buff. He could quote from all the classics, and often amused himself reenacting epic scenes of heroes old and new using props and what costumes he could put together for fun and to make his friends laugh. The greatest thrill was to be sucked into the film to the point he felt a part of it.

In the middle of the climax, Kurt's tail (the only part of his anatomy that couldn't be hidden by his inducer, and had to be tucked away out of sight) slipped out to wave behind him happily.

As the lights finally came back up and the handful of other people in the theater began to leave, Piotr shook his head. "That seemed very unrealistic."

"Of course it did, Piotr," Anna said, smiling, "it was a good movie. If they made all movies realistic, there would be only one interesting thing happening in a whole lifetime of nose-pickin'ly boring everyday stuff."

Kurt stood after Piotr and Anna started to walk out the aisle. He stretched, grinning, unaware his blue, spade tipped tail was still out of hiding for all to see. "I think they should make a movie about us!" He said, a spring in his step as he followed them out.

"Us?" Piotr asked, confused. "Why? We do not do anything interesting…"

Anna grinned. "Not yet we don't. Well, not yet YOU don't. You think it wasn't interestin' t'go check out a burnin', exploded school gym? T'rescue a scared, defenseless girl?"

Kurt puffed out his chest a little. "You make it sound like I was a hero rescuing a damsel in distress!"

"Which, by definition, you did," Anna replied.

Kurt waved his arm around like he held a sword, imagining his adventure in a new and wonderfully theatric light. "Wow! I did!"

Anna smiled and looked at Piotr. "You've only been in the Professor's school a year, Piotr. You ain't seen nothin' yet."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Piotr asked.

"It means, Piotr, that PE at XI don't exactly mean ugly gym shorts, awkward locker rooms, and dorky exercises like jumpin' jacks and pushups."

Kurt walked between them, oblivious to the pale stares and vicious whispers of onlookers, as they left the mall to go toward the parking lot. "This year you will likely go into active training!" He looked at Anna, tickled at his dramatic new revelation. "So we are like the people in the movies and TV, then?"

"Sure we are," she replied, "as long as you push all the long practices, broken bones, sucky high-school life, and how much everyone hates us out of it, we could look a lot like them guys in the movies you like so much."

"So," Piotr said thoughtfully, "we are to become heroes?"

"Yes!" Kurt proclaimed, striking another pose. "The finest heroes in the world!"

Anna didn't share his vision. "All depends on how you look at it, Piotr. Or who's lookin' at it to be more precise."

Kurt jumped up onto the hood of a car, standing straight, tall, and proud. "We are looking at it, friends! We are looking and we are the only ones who decide whether we will be men, mice"- he looked at Anna and paused –"or women."

The expression on her face turned to horror and she looked around nervously. "Kurt! Git down right now!"

Piotr's eyes widened and he grabbed Kurt's arm, pulling him down. "Hide your tail!"

Kurt's heart sunk down so low he knew it had plunged straight down through his feet below the pavement. He hastily started tucking his tail away, but tall, broad shapes came out of the shadows between the cars in the lot.

Anna backed up close to them, fists clenched and glaring defensively. "Too late…"

Kurt watched as men came out of the darkness, grown men with everything from vicious scowls and gnarled fists, to righteous resolve and tire irons in their hands. They didn't look like thugs or gang members. What really unnerved Kurt was that most were regular men who looked like they had solid jobs, families, and responsibility in the community.

Piotr apparently saw this too. "We do not mean any harm," he said, attempting a smile to them.

"We?" A man stepped out of the circling mob, speaking for all of them. He was a tough looking man, someone Kurt judged to work a manual job that required muscle and authoritative thinking. "You protecting that thing?" He pointed to Kurt who by now had tucked his tail out of sight, but they'd all apparently seen it.

Anna glared at him. "Yeah, what of it?!"

The mob tightened their circle around them and Kurt whispered at Anna. "Please, do not anger them! Ask them what they want and we will give it to them and be on our way." He swallowed miserably, wishing they'd never left the estate, but at least they hadn't seen all of his mutation. That was proven to bring out torches and pitchforks in even the most urban of places.

Anna frowned, but addressed the leader. "What the hell d'you want?!"

That wasn't how Kurt would have had her phrase it.

"We want him and his kind outta this town!" the man shouted and the crowd roared in approval.

Piotr seemed torn, but he was a solid wall blocking them from Kurt and he wasn't about to let anything move him. "He has not done anything to this place!"

Voices from all around the circle roared in response. "He blew up the school!" "They're threatening our kids!" "They're a danger to the state!"

This was more than what Anna could put up with. "Like hell he did! He's a good kid and doesn't go sneakin' around ambushin' kids half his age in a public parkin' lot!"

The leader's face hardened angrily. "So what? Are you saying he's like your pet? You keep him long enough, something like that's gonna bite."

Anna glared right back at him as he advanced. "You get up in my face, Ah'll bite too."

He grinned, baring his teeth. "Not surprised, since you talk like a southern hick. You want to go back to your backwoods hole, little girl?" He reached out to shove her aside on his way to grab Kurt.

Anna grabbed the front of his shirt, hauled him in front of her and landed a hard right jab directly on his nose. The muted crunch of the small bones breaking set everyone off.

All of the men suddenly descended on Anna who spit, snarled, and swung with all her might. Some of them remembered what they'd come to do in the first place and went straight for Kurt.

All Kurt saw was Anna beset by ten men grabbing at her fiercely fighting arms and legs and he suddenly bamfed out from behind Piotr onto the shoulders of two dark men, slamming their heads together hard, severely reducing their willingness to continue fighting. "Anna, get out of there!"

"Like hell!" she yelled back, a wicked grin on her face as she kneed a tall man in the crotch before swinging him around by his belt to gain momentum, letting him go to knock down two others nearby. She immediately pounced on a man with a scruffy mustache and fought to get him in a chokehold.

Kurt was more a strike and dodge fighter. He bamfed from one group to another, dealing sharp, carefully placed blows to sensitive targets while constantly keeping out of the eye-to-eye range of the attackers' simple fist and foot attacks. He soon noticed, however, that for every man they ran off, more joined the fray. He bamfed a few feet above the fight in the air to see how this was happening and was dismayed to see and hear some who had run away crying out for help against a mutant attack. Younger, stronger men were running towards them, armed with real weapons. They looked like the anti-mutant gangs that had been on TV the last few days and Kurt's heart began to pound in fear as he rejoined the fray.

"Anna!" he called out hoping she'd hear him. "We need to get out! There are more coming!"

A huge arm suddenly cleared four men, shoving them forcefully out to the perimeter of the fight. Piotr pushed and shoved threats away from his friends, but Kurt could see the big Russian boy was close to losing his temper. He picked up a new arrival and flung him along the ground like he was skipping a stone. "Leave my friends alone!"

Anna's laugh surprised Kurt. "Get 'em, Piotr! You show 'em who they're dealin' with!" Kurt caught a glimpse of her and was startled to see she'd earned a split lip, but he knew the man who'd dealt the blow would be on the ground somewhere twitching long after the fight was over.

"Be careful, Piotr! Do not hurt them," Kurt said, bamfing onto Piotr's shoulders to catch a small breather.

"Do not worry, my friend," Piotr said, "I will not hurt them…" He hurled one onto the hood of a car whose alarm went off at the impact which dented the metal. "…not too badly."

As Kurt attempted to leap off of Piotr's shoulders, he felt a forceful yank on his tail that felt like it might pull it clean off. He yelped and attempted to teleport, landing on top of a tall truck cab. He looked back only to see a couple of men had succeeded in climbing onto Piotr's back. A younger one clung to his back like a tick where Piotr couldn't reach to pull him off and was attempting to choke him out.

"Anna! Piotr needs"- Kurt gasped. He was going to ask for help, but his blood ran cold to see Anna had her arms pulled back uselessly and there were more assailants attempting to grab hold of her ankles. She bit and snarled, but they had their window of opportunity and were making full use of it.

Kurt's feet suddenly slipped and he looked down around the truck to find eight of the gang members trying to dislodge him from the cab roof by rocking the tall truck as hard as they could. "Stop it! Stop! I have not hurt anyone! Let us go and we will not press charges!"

They only laughed, cursed, and doubled their efforts until all Kurt could do was cling to any possible grip he could get on the cab.

Piotr fought to get to Anna, but as his parasitic attacker succeeded in distracting him more, he couldn't fight off others who soon started to advance with their weapons at the ready.

As Kurt slipped and slid from one side of the cab roof to the other, he started to hear something rumbling under the shouts and cheers of the mob celebrating their oncoming victory. He listened harder and chanced a glance up at the lot entrance. He saw the two lights first, then focused and waved frantically. "Over here! Please, please, over here!"

The leaders of the group were smart enough to look up too, but not very fast. By the time they did, a huge motorcycle roared straight toward the middle of the mob and almost half took off running, afraid to be identified in the bright, chic headlights.

Those left, the most aggressive, seemed confused, staring at the wicked looking bike as it shot right into the middle of them and whipped around in a tight turn with screeching tires, the rider sitting low and revving the engine.

Piotr and Anna were not stunned, however, and the distraction was enough for them to gain the upper hand. Anna flipped the man holding her arms up over her head and onto the ground where he scrambled to rise and get out of there. Piotr slammed his clinging opponent against the truck Kurt was on and Kurt joined his friends in running off the last of the men.

"And stay the hell away!" Anna yelled after them, throwing a tire iron which fell short of their rapidly retreating backs. She touched her split lip and grimaced at the blood left on her glove. "Damn…"

"Are you alright, Kurt?" Piotr asked seriously.

Kurt was watching the rider dismount the bike and puff cigar smoke out like a raging furnace stack. "Better than I will be…"

Anna stood with the two of them while their rescuer marched over.

"Of all the goddam stupid things that coulda made my night any worse," he roared at them as he came under the street light. "What the hell did you think you were doing, huh?! I thought you was smart kids!" The light threw dark shadows over the rough angles in his face, catching on his thick sideburns, black hair, and deeply furrowed brow. He gestured violently with his thick, half-smoked cigar, spreading ashes over the oil stained asphalt. "Didn't Warren tell alla you to stay inside?! As far as I know, he don't stutter! His damned rich daddy spent too much damn money on him to have him not be CLEAR!" He shoved the cigar back between his teeth and put his fists on his narrow hips, looking like either a tall murderous dwarf or short homicidal giant.

Kurt couldn't look at him and struggled to hide his tail again.

Piotr wrung his hands in front of him nervously, unable to look at him either. "Mr. Logan, we"-

Jim Logan pounced on the opportunity and stood right up in front of Piotr, short enough that he could look right up into his face. "Don't you give me an excuse, you hear me?!"

Piotr yanked his chin up and looked straight ahead, humiliated and full of reproach.

Logan grunted and stood in front of Kurt. "You put that thing away before anyone else sees it," he growled, gesturing at his tail.

Kurt, his heart in his throat, fumbled to do so and his face burned miserably. "Yes, Herr Logan."

In another two steps, he stood in front of Anna who stared fiercely right back at him, blood clotting up on her bottom lip. He took the cigar from between his teeth, tapped the ashes off against his leg, and blew out a lungful of smoke. "This thing has you written all over it, Rogue," he said, low and menacing. "You think the Professor tells you not to do something just because he thinks it's funny?"

"It ain't fair!" she said, her tone not quite up to the spirit in her words.

His eyes widened at her nerve. "'It ain't fair'?! You know what ain't fair? Life, you little punk! You keep fighting it and you'll end up a loser like me. Now one more fit outta you and you're gonna find yourself in a hell of a lot more trouble than you were just in. You know why? Because you won't have nowhere to go that'll look after you and all the grief you cause people who care about you, y'hear me?" He took a long pull at his cigar and blew it out over his shoulder, looking her up and down. When he spoke again his voice was lower. "Listen, alla you get back to the Worthington place. Professor knows you've been giving him grief and the pretty boy might just toss you out on your ass if he has to handle any of this tonight, so you be good from here on out and we won't tell him."

Kurt looked up at him. "Really?"

Logan nodded, stomping out the stub of his cigar on the asphalt. "Yeah, really. But from here on out, you better get it. …We'll finish this at Warren's. Anna, if you so much as speed"-

"I won't, okay?!" she snapped.

He pointed a cautionary finger at her. "I'll be right behind you the whole way." He went over to the big sleek bike and got on while they got into Warren's car and the rumble of the bike took the place of any conversation that might have been made between the three of them.

Once at the house, quiet but all lit up like Anna had left it in case Warren came back before they did, Logan shoved them all into the kitchen so he could have a beer while he resumed his tirade.

Anna pushed her chair back a whole foot when she collapsed herself into it, folding her arms and scowling. Kurt (who had turned off his image inducer as soon as they were indoors) and Piotr took chairs more humbly, watching while Logan opened a bottle and sampled it, leaning against the granite-topped island.

He swallowed and looked at the label, then swung the bottle by the neck as he looked at them. "Even though we're keeping this quiet from the Rich Boy, Cyclops sent me out to get you outta your scrap."

Kurt moaned and slumped.

"Damn right," Logan grunted. "You think I like when he sends me to bail anybody out?" He took a swig of his beer and put it down again. "Thing is he chewed my ear off on how serious this is, and I think you need to know too." He ticked them off on his fingers as he proceeded to list the charges against them. "You disobeyed an order. You stole a car." Here he paused. "I don't wanna hear anything about 'borrowing' because you didn't do any of that. You stole."

Anna grumbled, but a glare from Logan silenced her.

He went on. "You let the whole city know Kurt's a mutant and at least got yourselves branded sympathizers, which around these parts is about as dangerous."

Kurt's heart sank way down. "I am known…?"

"Damn right you're known," Logan said seriously. "Baywood High is gonna be hell for all three of you now that this story's been blasted all over the 11:00 news as a highlight story. Some of those guys had cameras in their phones, hats, hands, wherever the hell they're sticking cameras now. Seem to think it's their duty to out all of us." He leveled a look at Kurt. "And they got you."

Anna's face paled as she looked at Kurt. "I… Kurt…"

Kurt shook his head and smiled at her sadly. "I know you did not mean to, Anna."

He felt Piotr's hand on his shoulder. "We will not abandon you."

Logan grimaced. "You better not. All three of you have one more charge coming. And Ole Blasty Eye about tore his hair out before shouting it at me to tell you."

Piotr blinked. "What is it?"

"If you get too much attention with this stunt and too many folks start looking into the fact you're living at the Institute, you may have given up the whole operation!"

"What?!" Kurt's eyes widened and his tail twitched fearfully.

"The whole institute could be found out, if the Professor can't find and close down anyone who comes sniffing after the trail you'll leave," Logan said, "and then there won't be nowhere for everyone else to go. …and you can kiss the precious X-men goodbye."

That made even Anna pale.

Logan swigged off the last of his beer and took the bike keys out of his pocket again. "Stew on that. I gotta go before Rich Boy gets back." He grinned with a note of menace. "Can't wait to get you three back in training. Enjoy your last few days of summer."

He left the kitchen and before long he was gone.

Kurt looked at his friends. "You know what? I do not feel much like a hero anymore."

"Ah'm sorry, Kurt," Anna said slowly, not looking at him. "Ah didn' think it'd be so serious… ah ruined everythin' for you."

"Hiding who I am is not everything, Anna," Kurt said.

Piotr sat in his chair, frowning to himself. "Those men… I cannot understand them."

"Don't try," Anna said, getting up and throwing away the bottle Logan left on the counter.

Kurt stood too. "They believed they were protecting their home. Well, the first group did at least. We would do the same in their place."

"No," Piotr stood and towered over his blue furred friend. "We would not. They were not noble men. If they were brave, they would go after the mutants who use their powers like weapons, not after those of us who use our powers for good things, for their benefit." He shook his head. "They were irrational and violent, and more a menace to their city than us."

"This," Anna said, walking with them to their rooms, "is why we gotta stick together. Ain't no one gonna understand us unless they're one of us."

Kurt shook his head, rubbing where he was struck once on his shoulder in the fight. "That is not true. I hope it is not true."

Piotr smiled at both of them. "We have friends. We are friends. And we will have our friends at the Institute. We have family there."

Kurt smiled and nodded, feeling a little better. "Yes."

Anna grinned with some of her fiery confidence. "And we'll fight to keep those friends too, no matter what."


	2. Cursed

"I'll bring whatever you forgot," Warren said, checking the back of the yellow jeep for the fourth time.

Kate placed herself between him and the pile of luggage. "I haven't forgotten anything," she insisted. She couldn't help but smile at his concern for her. "Stop worrying, Warren. Use the time you might have spent worrying about me on calling your dad. He'll eventually learn I'm moving out."

He sighed and shook his head. He wasn't going to call.

"Just figure out a few options," she suggested. His fear was of the deep rooted family kind, one that hurt her to push. "You're an adult, Warren. We both are. I'll call mine first…?"

"No!" he said quickly, then relaxed again, sheepish. "No, Katie, I… I'll talk to him." He smiled, but it was half-empty. "I promise."

She knew he would, but she just didn't know when it would actually happen. Shortly after that she climbed into her jeep and drove off the Worthington Estate and onto the main road.

Kate felt the effects instantly and her grip on the wheel tightened. She felt Warren's cautious, confused love dissipate into the air and distance between them. She clung to even the last wisps of loathing from Anna, suspicion from Kurt, and the sweet unconditional kindness of Piotr. They all slowly dried up.

All the while Kate's heart beat faster and she fumbled for her purse. She'd forgotten the tremors. Her vision blurred, but she couldn't stop the car. "Only a few miles," she told herself.

No one was around. No one. Kate's own hell where, like a desert, there wasn't a breath of fresh air or a dribble of water.

When she lost even the trace of a hiker a half mile from the road, her heart seized with an irregular beat.

She winced and grabbed for the vials in her purse. It had been months since it had been this bad. She had prepared herself, but she could hardly grip the vial.

Finally she closed her trembling fingers around the glass and twisted the cap to expose the vent holes. Kate almost pressed it to her nose as she took a deep breath of it.

Her trembling quieted slightly, her vision straightened, and she took another deep breath.

The vial was of an unassuming pharmaceutical green glass, the kind used in the Worthington Laboratory. Inside was no inhaled drug, no strange medicine, but naturally distilled human pheromones.

Kate inhaled deeply before closing the cap and setting the bottle aside. She wouldn't let it so far out of reach again in the car.

Just to be safe, she turned the radio on and scanned channels for the perkiest song playing. It had been months since she'd been out of contact of people. She only had a 10 minute drive ahead of her to her dream job and a huge collection of company, but the last time she took this drive, she'd had Warren right next to her.

Kate tried to focus on the opportunity she was driving to instead of the painful, panicky constriction she felt in every muscle. Just a few miles and she'd be where she could help more mutant children than she'd ever seen collected in one place. She imagined the challenges they may have had to face.

That morning she had risen early to get ready. She looked at Warren asleep next to her and hoped what they'd talked about the night before would actually work. That he still shared the bed with her that night was surprising, but welcome. She couldn't imagine attempting the lonely drive without it.

He woke while she was doing her make-up.

She looked up to the mirror and saw him there. It killed her willpower when he smiled at her for all the world like a real angel, his massive white wings tucked at his shoulders.

"A little nervous, Katie?" He asked. He held up his trembling hand, showing her that her nerves had overflowed to him.

She blushed and sighed. "Yeah, sorry."

"You'll do fine," he said, coming into the bathroom with her. "Seriously, you're made for this!"

She shot him a scolding look.

"Okay, you're practically made for this."

She knew he didn't understand why this bothered her so badly. Maybe it was his confidence in the idea, or the security he felt in it that frustrated her. "I can still screw this up," she tried to explain, applying her mascara. "A grad student actually getting a position like this is ridiculous." She capped the tube and looked at herself in the mirror. "I feel like I've cheated…" She looked at her reflection and it read young, scared, and trying-too-hard.

"You haven't cheated!" Warren told her, exasperated. He put his hands on her shoulders and she felt his confidence go through her like a shock of warm water. "You're intelligent, passionate, and talented."

She raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"And you're needed, so don't feel like they made this position just for you." He smiled. "Okay?"

He was trying, and she had to give him credit for that. Kate smiled a little. "Okay, fine…"

"Besides, I'll be right behind you." He reached up to brush a lock of hair behind her ear, but Kate caught his hand.

"Warren…"

He was embarrassed, sheepish, and a bit disappointed, but Kate couldn't tell if the disappointment was in himself or in general. All she could feel was spikes of negative emotion that went high and then were copied by spikes of shame. "Sorry…" he said. "Habit, I guess. Can't blame a guy, right?"

She couldn't blame him, she decided, as she drove later that morning. How he still had feelings for her after everything she did to him was beyond her. Three months of living together was habit-forming, though. His habits, however, were nothing to be ashamed of, unlike hers.

Kate took another whiff of the pheromones as she drove. Stale stuff. It had none of the roundness or the constant dynamics of real emotion. She didn't tremble or reel, but inside she still felt hollow and hooked up to a vacuum-sealer on high. At any moment she worried her skin would quit screaming over her muscles and just implode already.

She turned the music higher and tried to sing along. Reluctant lungs made it hard, but it helped a little.

The countryside of Westchester County passed by in a tranquil, late-summer blur. This was the land of old money and sprawling estates, private wooded hills and sculpted gardens. If people weren't so sparse, Kate would have taken her time to enjoy the cool air and pleasant breeze. Instead, her yellow jeep left the highway speed limit behind.

She finally felt the little flickers of several emotional currents in the area as she neared the first gate. There were people within two miles now. Kate took in the ripples they made and could breathe easier. Her pulse quieted and her lungs filled easier. She checked the post-it she'd left on the dashboard and used a keypad to open the sliding gate.

From there, she followed a well-worn dirt road through some thick forest growth. It was so quiet she might have felt more discomfort, but she listened to suspicion. Suspicion, when it surfaced, felt like a sour ball in the back of her chest that vibrated at different intensities. "I'll take what I can get," she mumbled to herself, closing the vial of pheromone securely and slipping it back into her purse.

She approached another gate, this one of wrought-iron set in a thick, stately brick wall. By then she could take deep breaths and her heart rate was returning to normal. She looked around and leaned out to buzz the intercom.

It came online with a crackle. "Name?"

Just a voice in real time, communicating it's immense variance of emotion in one syllable, was enough to fill her out. "Oh! Yes, hi! Kate Farnsworth. I should be on the list…"

There was silence for a moment then the gate opened. She made sure to buzz in a "thank you" before driving through.

She drove up a curved gravel drive and took in the amazing house, smiling. It looked like a cross between a cottage and a castle; a beautiful three-storey mansion. The symmetrical wings stretched to either side of a proud central porch and massive double doors.

She parked out front and got out. The air was sweet with the rippling, emotional currents of at least thirty different people on the property. It wasn't at capacity, but it was irresistible to her. She wasn't sure it was allowed, but she climbed the cut stone steps and let herself in.

Within the handsome foyer, Kate stood under the classy chandelier and took a deep breath. A smile spread wide over her face and she closed her eyes, even though the colors were warm and vibrant. With her eyes closed, she could see emotions like colors and textures wash over her and through her. She felt full, satisfied and her energy rose up until she felt like singing. Throughout her body, she could taste and feel the years of its habitation, the residents and the mission of the place. Here were years of safety, sanctuary, security, and… sorrow. She blinked her eyes open at the quiet roll of wheels on the fine wood floors.

"Kaitlyn."

She smiled. "Charles!"

Professor Xavier wheeled his chair to meet her, chuckling. "If you'll forgive me a little indignation, Kaitlyn, it's about time I got you here!" He held his arms open.

She paused. "Is it really allowed? I mean, would it be professional to" –

"Kaitlyn, this is my institution." He smiled, raising an eyebrow. "I decide who is allowed to hug and when."

She felt his voice in her mind immediately after.

"You could use a friendly touch, Kaitlyn. I'm more than willing."

She quickly embraced him and felt the last corners of her body relax out of the tension from the drive. A balanced emotion like his, positive, uplifting, and bracing, made her mind clearer, and her muscles feel warm and loose. She released him, smiling. "You really are glad I'm here?"

He sat back in his chair, hands folded and elbows on the arm rests. "Of course! I've been trying to get you here for ten years." He smiled as he looked her over. "How are your powers coming?"

"Great!" Kate felt light on her feet, loose in her limbs, and energized enough that she wanted to shout, but she quelled it carefully. "Sorry. Really well, actually. I've worked up to nearly eight hours without needing a touch. And I drove here all by myself!"

Charles gestured for her to follow down a high ceilinged corridor to the right of the stairs. "Go on."

She followed, walking next to him. "Oh, I also have some medical remedies. The TV and radio help in a pinch."

"But they don't quite satisfy, do they?" He paused at a door and looked up at her kindly. "I'm glad you've been working at it. Now, how would you like to see your office?"

She followed Charles through the door. "I get an office?"

Charles chuckled. "Yes, but this is my office." He crossed the soft rug and stopped behind his desk, rifling through papers.

Kate looked around, tracing her fingers over the edges of an elegant chalkboard. "So you teach too?"

"Yes, though the public schools do the real teaching. We mostly tutor." He chuckled. "I have the privilege of tutoring physics and philosophy… It's the beauty of being the boss. I can teach what I like." He took a file out and set it on his desk before leaning his elbows on his arm rests. "So, Kate. I'm glad you finally stopped trying to fight yourself."

Kate's face burned and she looked down. "After the first two hours of trying to resist on my own it was pretty clear abstinence wasn't the answer. I've done my best to keep as independent as possible and… not hurt anyone."

Charles came back from behind his desk, the file on his lap. "Follow me, Kate."

She did as he led her to a door on the right of his desk. It opened to another office, a smaller space with a window into the back gardens just like the one in his. There were several bookcases that were empty, a fine desk, file cabinets, and a comfortable-looking couch against the wall near a door that obviously led to the main hallway.

"This is your office," the professor said, turning to her.

Kate's eyes lit up. There was a lot of potential here, but before she could open her mouth to thank him, Charles spoke again.

"Kaitlyn, I'm very impressed with how far you've come. You're an intelligent and talented psychologist and you've been very inventive and compassionate in dealing with your challenges." He folded his hands in his lap. "Here I've always worked to help the children in my care do just what you have done. They have regular medical tests, guidance, and instruction on how to develop and use their powers constructively. I also want this place to teach our kind to reach their full potential."

"Don't worry, Professor," Kate said quickly. "I won't give up, you'll see. Before long, I'll have control of it."

He tried to interject, but she just couldn't let him worry about her.

"I'm strong enough to work this out," she said, smiling. "Really. Just being here is doing me good. Since this is the kind of place I've been studying to work in, I'll never be in a position like the last" – she stopped. "Well, I'll never hurt someone else like I did Warren. I can't let that happen."

Charles shook his head. "Kate, you need people, and you don't have to hurt them. You need what they give you." He caught and held her eyes so she couldn't disconnect from his seriousness and concern. "Come with me please."

"But"- Before she could argue, he started to leave the office.

"Come."

She followed him out, feeling partly that she'd been taken to the principal's office and told off. His profile suddenly took on an agitated tremor and she wanted to ask what frustrated him, but as soon as they stepped out they almost ran into warren and the three kids. "Oh!" She felt the mixed reactions hit her from each different direction, a hurricane of feelings extended in her direction and most of them unpleasant enough to make her nauseous.

"What're you doin' here?!" Anna snapped, feeling violated just seeing Kate in the mutant school.

Warren was happy to see Kate, but he frowned at Anna. "Anna, stop that."

Piotr and Kurt stared, dumbfounded, but Kurt quickly showed his dislike of her with a wave of noxious black anger mirroring Anna's.

"She ain't one of us!" Anna retorted. "You ain't one of us," she repeated to Kate, standing between kate, standing between Kate and the other two.

Charles' voice came into Kate's mind as she reeled from the head-spinning mix of needling resentment. "Be honest, now, Kate. You cannot be ashamed of what you are. Tell them."

The prospect terrified her, but with his mental push, it came out. "But I am…" her voice was small and strained, and in their temporary silence she repeated it, trembling. "I am one of you. That's why I'm here…"

Warren's pride in her helped keep her knees from buckling. It was like a solid rock to focus on in the middle of her emotions being as erratic and negative as the others'. The three kids were shocked, but Anna recovered first, her fury hotter than before. "You- you lied!"

"Anna," Charles cautioned.

"No!" she shouted over him. "You don't know what it is to be mutant, liar!" Her voice was a hiss and she gave off anger in sickening waves so hard that Kate felt it touch her center so Kate wanted to hate herself, or Anna.

With that, she stormed off, ignoring the efforts of Kurt to stop her. He was bewildered, but his anger was diminished. He was even embarrassed. "I am sorry for my sister, Frau Kate… Please excuse me." He met her eyes once before following Anna. Kate felt guilt from the look and wished she could have told him it was alright, but he left too fast.

"I'm proud of you, Kate," Charles told her mentally.

"So you are a mutant too?" Piotr said, wearing a huge relieved grin. He took her hand in both of his. "This is most wonderful news! I am allowed to like you now!" He gave off a bright, warm flow of sincere relief and pleasure up her arm and straight into her chest to radiate out.

Warren chuckled.

Kate giggled at his innocent excitement, and from the comfort his glow brought her. "I'm so glad, Piotr. I could use friends here."

Charles smiled a little. "You are allowed to like anyone, Piotr. Don't be pressured to dislike humans." He looked at Warren. "I think you should speak to Kurt."

Warren sighed. "I think you're right." He smiled at Kate, proud of her, before he left Piotr there with them.

"Reactions like Anna's, unfortunately, are exactly why your jurisdiction will be the elementary class for now, Kate."

Kate turned to him in dismay. "What? But I thought" –

"Yes, Kate, you are the school counselor, but students here have very sensitive histories. I'm afraid your powers are not honed enough yet to address the majority of our students."

Kate's heart sank. "My powers…? But that has nothing to do with my" –

"Kaitlyn, I want you to grow from this experience. It's not a punishment. Please don't think of it that way."

"Then what is it?"

Piotr looked on in concern. "Can I help?"

Charles smiled up at the tall young man. "No, Piotr, don't worry. Go on and unpack."

Piotr looked at Kate as if for confirmation. The boy was a wonderful mirror, a natural sympathizer, and Kate felt his emotions matching her own which, in her conscience, was probably not the best thing for him. The sweet boy was worried.

She forced a smiled. "Go on, Piotr. I'll be alright."

He nodded and left up the stairs, much quieter than Anna had.

"I want you to grow into your potential, Kate, and I see a lot of potential in you," Charles smiled kindly. "I'm very excited to see how you grow into your position. You'll be the keeper of the files and do some secretarial work until you have regular work with our students. However, before you settle in and I give you the basic tour, I need you to sign these." He handed her the file from his office and a pen.

She took it and scanned the papers. "What are they?"

Charles smiled and she felt an odd flush of pride from him. "A privacy contract, my dear. A necessary prerequisite for any position here at the Institute."

"Oh," she replied, signing. "I can see that. We wouldn't want anyone to blab about the children."

"Among other things…" Charles added quietly.

Kate had just finished signing the final dotted line when a woman arrived from the foyer. She was 20, maybe 21, but she struck Kate as mature for her age. She had long, shiny red hair, was very pretty, but she was unhappy and her emotions were plunging below normal, troubled and almost dark from sadness over something.

"Sorry, Professor," she said. It was like a cloud hung over her. "The news just broke."

Charles sighed. "Well, at least we knew this one was coming."

Kate looked from one to the other. "What happened?"

Charles gestured to the woman. "Kaitlyn, this is Jean Grey."

Kate nodded to her, not feeling this was the time for really making an acquaintance.

The woman nodded back, but her attention was clearly not on Kate. She looked at Charles, her eyes low and resigned. "Three of our students snuck out to the mall last night."

Kate's heart clutched. "What? With all of the riots and protests going on?"

"Yes," Charles said, sadly. "And they were attacked in the parking lot of the theater."

"The men who attacked them haven't been identified," Jean said, "but some of them went ahead and told the newspaper and channel 12 that they were attacked by a mutant and his friends… The anti-mutant feeling is at an all-time high."

Kate nodded uncomfortably. "I can feel that." How could she put a word to that? It was oppressive and stifling, and flowed underneath everything, only souring her palate when there were no other people close enough to override it.

"We'll make an announcement to the children already here," Charles said. "It might be wise to postpone the adoption of more students into the area for the time being."

Jean showed textbook disappointment, a spike in frustration and a plunge of confidence. "Professor…"

"We have no choice. As a safe haven, we have to be able to guarantee that safety or we cannot bring them in." Charles looked up at Kate and smiled a little, the bitterness of his own disappointment clear to her. "There's a small taste of how it is in these times, Kaitlyn. I recommend you dedicate some time to absorbing what you can from the files you now have in your custody."

Kate had no trouble matching their sorrow at the strained situation in quiet little Bayville. "I'll do my best."

Late that next morning, Kate replied to a knock on her new office door with a cheery, "Come in!" As the door opened, Kate looked up and recognized Ororo Munroe from her staff file and she was excited to have a staff visitor.

Mrs. Munroe came in and offered her elegant hand with a friendly smile. "Hello. I am Ororo," she said. "I hoped to meet you yesterday, but there were quite a few things to take care of…"

Kate took her hand. "Call me Kate, please. Was it anything to do with what was on the news?" she asked, hoping to show she knew what was going on around the school.

She nodded, elegant even in discomfort. "Yes… But it's handled now and I hoped to speak to you and thank you for embracing your new position." She smiled a little sheepishly. "We have something to talk about."

Kate smiled. "I'm here to talk, honestly. I just made some coffee. Would you like some?"

Ororo nodded and came in, letting the door close behind her. "I would, thank you." She looked around and Kate poured coffee into two of her brightly painted mugs.

Kate could feel her reactions to the office as she took in all the decorating Kate did overnight. "Have a seat. Make yourself comfortable." She brought the mugs over and sat next to her, smiling. "Do you like it?"

Ororo took her seat and looked around. "It's certainly quite different. Are those toys?" she asked, pointing to a corner.

Kate grinned. "Sure are!" It was a pleasure to feel her surprise and curiosity. Around Kate, since she was so new, there weren't a lot of extraverted emotions like those. Most were self-conscious or distanced.

The office was almost completely unpacked, a chore she had focused on as soon as she could and stuck to it late into the night. She made sure the space was at least scattered with positive things so it could be a sanctuary of sorts. Ororo's eyes had been drawn to a corner to the left of her desk that appeared to overflow with stuffed animals and soft toys.

Kate's guest smiled at the comfortable couch, chairs, and coffee table that were the real focus of the room. The desk and files were beyond the more comfortable space, tucked out of the way but still functional and lit by the windows.

"How did you get so much accomplished since yesterday?" she asked Kate. "There are many things here that were not from your small jeep."

Kate smiled bashfully. "I'm a dreamer, I suppose. I couldn't wait to put this place together just as I pictured my office would be when I got a position like this."

Ororo took a closer look at her and Kate tried to smile her best. "Kate, did you sleep last night?"

"Not well, I'm afraid. Still adjusting to the sounds around here at night, I guess. And don't worry; I didn't bring all of this in myself. Piotr was good enough to lend a pair of very strong hands." Kate knew Ororo still worried. Her attention was still on Kate and her emotions were slowly attempting sync with Kate's sympathetically. Kate feared it was too obvious she hadn't slept at all.

Thankfully Ororo picked up on her discomfort and changed the subject. "I have come, first of all, to offer you a welcome from the staff. I do not think we have ever had someone come to the Institute from outside specifically to work here. Most of us have been here for a year or two as students and simply stayed on to teach. So if you feel any hostility, please do not take it personally… We are just not at all used to outsiders."

Kate could feel her sincerity and she sipped her coffee. "I've picked up on that. It's only my second day, so I'm sure there will be adjustment on both sides."

"You will fit in, soon, I am sure." Ororo patted Kate's hand and the feeling was reassuring and warm. "Now, I have also come over another matter… one a little more personal."

"Oh?" Kate doubted there was a reason for someone so stable to come to her for herself. This woman felt like an ocean of emotional balance and control.

She smiled with mixed pride and self-consciousness. "You had the chance to meet my son yesterday when you had the elementary school visit your office. Azari."

Kate laughed. "Oh! Yes! He's yours?"

Ororo smiled. "Yes, and I believe he is on your list of children to work with. I want you to know he is very excited to see how is … flower turned out?"

"Yes, of course! His is very interesting." Kate smiled and showed her a lineup of white daisies in different vases with colored water. "His is on the end. The brown one. He wanted to see what all of the colors together looked like."

She looked at the set of tall vases and at the flowers. The centers of the petals were taking on little veins of their respective colored waters. "So what is this for? An experiment?"

"Sort of," Kate said. "I used it to explain how my powers work… See, I told the kids I'm an empath. I need emotions the same way that flowers need water. So if there's something happy, I soak it up and am happy, like the flower turns bright yellow." Kate smiled and pointed to a flower with yellow coloring in the vase.

"Fascinating," Ororo said, smiling. "What a unique gift. I have never met an empath. Is it a kind of psychic power?"

"Sort of," Kate said, "but I try not to use it if I can help it. Is there anything you can tell me about Azari that might help me when I start talking to him?" Kate was eager to change the subject away from herself and her powers, and thankfully the mention of her son was enough to focus her attention on that. "I read Azari's file and there are some unfortunate notes from his elementary school teachers…"

"Please do not let their comments overshadow him. Azari's a good boy, really." She glowed with maternal love, a warm and beautiful blend of pride and unconditional receptiveness, and Kate was happy to absorb what she could from it. "Azari's power is not doing him any real favors. We have spoken to Dr. McCoy about his energy, but" – She paused as Kate handed her the cup. "Have you spoken to him? Dr. McCoy, I mean?"

"I haven't met him, though I'd love to. I'm a big fan of his work. What did he have to say about Azari?"

"Not much that could help him at school… Since the children have to go with the human children, I cannot tell the administration my son does not have an attention disorder. Telling them he needs to expend energy every hour would require an explanation… and I cannot tell them he is literally creating electricity."

Kate felt her frustration and helplessness and she took on some of it, and bounced it back to her in order to it sympathetically. "Of course not. That's a very hard position to be in."

"I simply worry he may grow to be as rebellious as they say he is."

Kate smiled. "Don't worry. I'd like to help, and it's a common fear. I'll talk to him today and I'll see what we can do to help him."

She could sense the mother's hesitation to completely trust her. Ororo's emotional profile would grow active then suppress itself when she noticed Kate's sympathy. Kate was sincere, but she never did expect anyone to greet her with complete commitment.

"Thank you," Ororo replied. She set her cup down and smiled with regret. "I really should get going. Thank you for the coffee."

Kate stood with her. "My pleasure."

"If you have any trouble with Azari," she said, standing at the door, "if he is obstinate, resistant, anything… feel free to call me or my husband."

She smiled. "I'll keep that in mind, but I wouldn't worry." She bid farewell to Mrs. Monroe and rubbed her eyes. "Stay awake, Kate," she muttered, finishing off both her and her guest's coffee.

She hated nights generally, but it was pure hell trying to get through a night sleeping alone and in a strange bed. She ended up not sleeping at all that first night, but instead she unpacked the boxes Piotr had helped her bring into her office.

Before she could pick up her pen to continue her paperwork, she changed her mind and collected her coat on her way out the door.

Kate walked to the back foyer and out onto a long stone portico. She could hear voices and feel children out in the manicured grounds, and it filled her through her nerves to the ends.

A small smile spread on her face at the chill in the air. She took a deep breath. Westchester was really breathtaking in August. The gardens practically glowed with vibrant, new fall colors, and the reflecting pool had early red and gold leaves floating on it like little boats. As she drew her coat closer around her against the morning chill, she watched Azari Monroe chase a small rust-colored dog into view. As they circled a tree, both with seemingly boundless energy, Kate was amazed to see the dog suddenly shift smoothly into a laughing rust-haired little girl, racing across the yard without missing a step.

As they raced out of view, Kate smiled to herself. What a place. She walked down the steps and around stone urns filled with crisp-leaved vines. She worked with mutant children since she finished her undergraduate degree in psychology, but none of the children she met were as powerful or emotionally stable as those at XI.

She guessed it was the environment here. Everywhere there was a sincere feeling of care and protection toward the members of the small community. There were low, constant levels of sympathy, receptiveness, and familiarity which were plenty to overcome the sour notes of the immediate town's discord with mutants. However, as she passed where a few of the children were playing, she felt the other side of that environment; suspicion of strangers. The children paused in their game and watched her, a couple of them backing off to keep a distance between them and her.

She flashed them a smiled and continued on. She really couldn't blame them. The news made sure everyone was aware of the public opinion about mutants. First there was the fire at the high school, then the attacks at the mall. At least there wasn't any footage of that, but the damage was done.

Kate heard the rhythm and chatter of a basketball game ahead and as she rounded a bend in the gravel path, she saw three young men at play.

From her long night studying the student files, she was able to recognize the boys as Robert "Bobby" Drake, Alex Summers, and John Allerdyce. Many times, Kate saw mutant children unhealthy whether they were malnourished, or allowed to go to seed with junk food by parents just hoping to make it easy.

These boys, like everyone else she'd met at the Institute, were in peak physical condition. There were few things that pleased her more than to see young people given everything they need to be healthy, happy, and strong.

"Excuse me," she said. "Could you tell me where I can find Amara?"

She felt them grow guarded as Alex, who was taller and had more gold to his hair than the other two blondes, and John, with a surprisingly powerful, incendiary emotional flavor, stood flanking Bobby. These three were close. She could tell because their emotions responded to and checked each other. Kate made a mental note of it. Bobby smirked. "What did you need to know for?"

Kate sensed he had some reason other than his own to be suspicious of her. Her best guess was he'd heard something. The early spike of curiosity gave it away. She simply smiled. "I'm the counselor the Professor hired." They recognized that and got curious; except John who glowered at her. "I need to arrange a meeting with her, but I don't know my way around quite yet. I hoped you could give me a hand?"

"Amara came around here headed to the south field," Bobby said, spinning the ball in his hands. "Some of the others were messing around out there and I think she went to watch. We haven't seen her come back, so she's probably still there."

"The south field…" Kate tried to place it mentally, but shook her head. "How would I get there?"

John smirked. "Didn't you get a map, doc?"

Alex smiled and shoved John's shoulder. "Lay off the new-bie, Pyro." He turned his very charming smile back to Kate. "Head a little ways past here on the path and hang a left at the big rock fountain. The way there is all lined with white gravel."

Kate smiled and put her hands back in her pockets against a chilling breeze. "Thank you, boys. Have fun."

Once she followed the path as Alex described, Kate easily found Amara. Several kids were playing soccer and the young Brazilian girl sat on the sidelines watching. Kate's heart ached for her as soon as she got close enough to feel the heartache and homesickness pierce her heart. It flowed like a frozen stream into her then spread painfully sad, piercing fingers out from her heart.

Kate approached Amara and smiled at her. "Hello."

She looked up and tentatively returned the smile.

Kate took a seat on the grass next to her. "I'm Ms. Kate I've been looking forward to meeting you, Amara."

"Professor Xavier said I might meet you," she replied.

She was fairly open, but shy. Her emotions were muted, but not suppressed and she was actively attempting to recognize Kate's emotion and match it. Kate was pleased to see such a normal reaction to another person. This was the first open, clean slate Kate had and she was pleased she could actually do her job. She watched the game with Amara. "This is a very interesting place, isn't it?"

"Yes," Amara replied. "But very nice, I think."

"This is my first whole day," Kate smiled. "How long have you been here?"

"A week," she said. "I have a few new friends. My roommate is really nice."

Kate grinned. "That's great! Have you heard from your parents?"

That made her smile. "Yes. They are very grateful for the school." Kate was happy to listen to the latest news about the small town in Brazil. She eagerly boosted the girl's emotional profile with curious questions about the warm climate, what grows there, and her family's life.

"It sounds like they're very supportive, Amara," Kate smiled. "It's always hard, though, coming to a new place to live."

Amara nodded. "Especially somewhere so cold!"

Kate laughed; pleased she could make a joke after her recent traumatic experiences. It was promising.

Amara looked at her again. "Are you really a mutant?"

Kate tasted suspicion like she always did. It was bitter and sat down deep in her throat. She smiled honestly, showing her struggle with freely admitting it. "Yes, I am. Believe it or not, Amara, I can be as dangerous as you can under certain circumstances."

Thankfully Amara trusted and feared that admission and Kate comfortably left the subject.

"I actually came to ask if you'd talked to anyone about what happened at the high school just before you came here."

That clammed her up. Amara's aura, her contribution to the emotional ebb and flow, went cold and still as she lowered her eyes and looked away.

Kate touched her shoulder gently. "Don't worry, Amara. It's up to you when you're comfortable talking about it… But I hope you will visit me in my office. We can talk about anything you want and I'd be very happy for the company."

Amara warmed again and some responsiveness to Kate's emotional current returned, but Kate felt it would be too much to push her toward anything now, so she simply smiled before getting up.

"I'm sure you could show them a thing or two about football in Brazil," she said with a wink. "They don't know what they're missing."

Amara blushed and Kate left with a smile.

Xavier's Institute was a small, specialized operation. There were only about fifty students all together, and within range of the mansion, she could feel all of them.

As Kate took her personal walk around the immaculate and luxurious grounds, she took a moment to appreciate the information she got from Amara. It was easy to tell when people were reacting, but not always to what or why. All Kate ever knew was the blend of emotion people were experiencing currently. If they permitted touch therapy, which she rarely recommended or risked, she could get a deeper read and even an emotional memory profile. But she was no telepath. She was at the mercy of what her subject told her. On the plus side, she could find a lie like a fluorescent light at midnight.

Kate strolled around the wide-open grounds, taking in the beautiful views. Locations had emotional traces too. Active emotion, like air, flowed everywhere and Kate just didn't have everyone else's protective shield of ignorance. In locations, the emotions of people who had visited or had lived settled in the earth or on objects of affection or attention. Here, around Xavier Institute, were feelings of trial, confidence, and fun. Security and safety tied it all together.

She drew comfort from the memories; after all it was hard to get the day-to-day profile of the Institute when people were still unsure what to make her. There was time for that, though. Plenty of time.

Kate took her tour into the mansion house. She was mostly familiar with the first floor so she took a walk around the bedrooms on the second floor to satisfy her curiosity.

She heard voices at the end of the hall and smiled when she recognized Bobby's.

"I'm totally gonna make varsity this year!"

Among a general chorus of laughter and talk, Kate heard Kurt's voice answer, "Not when you have never been on the team before, Bobby."

As she got closer to the end of the hall, she saw the corner room of the floor was an open common area.

Piotr was there and was confused. "They say I am a 'senior'. I forget that what is meaning."

A girl whose voice Kate didn't recognize giggled. "Fourth year, Piotr."

Kate paused at the door when she heard Anna, but she couldn't help smiling at the different profile coming off her. She was high above normal levels of contentment, and was receptive to the others, pleasant and friendly.

"You couldn't make varsity in anythin' but detention, Bobby boy," she laughed and enjoyed the laughter of the others.

Bobby took it with a smile. "You'll be eating your words when I'm a starter for the Baywood Beagles!"

"For their sake," Anna teased, "Ah hope you're not expectin' t'try out for basketball."

The other laughed appreciatively and the friendship was like warm, sustaining waves pulsing through Kate's chest. She decided to see what they could do to help her.

Kate knocked on the open door jamb and looked in. "Hello?" It was amazing to her to feel the emotional current suddenly scatter into a mess of conflicting currents.

Piotr positively beamed. "Hello Ms. Kate!" He started to stand, but Kate held up a hand.

"It's alright, Piotr, you don't have to get up."

Piotr happily stayed put on the soft couch. "Everyone, this is my friend, Ms." –

Anna was much less happy to see her and locked herself up behind a frown. "We all know who she is, Piotr."

Kurt hesitated a second, his blue devil tail swishing a bit as he sat atop the couch, but he worked up a small smile and met Kate's eyes briefly. "Good morning, Frau Kate…"

She returned the smile, showing she recognized the remorse she felt from him. She would have preferred to simply move on and feel receptive openness, but remorse didn't absorb into everyone the same way it did Kate. "It's a pleasure to see you, Kurt. The real you. I hope you don't mind my saying so, but you're a handsome young man." She was pleased to see the image of him that matched his picture in the files.

Kurt was surprised, but didn't have time to dwell since Bobby grinned and punched him in the arm.

The girl on the couch next to Piotr, who Kate could now see was Kitty Pryde, leaned forward eagerly. "So you're Kate!" She was a sweet-looking brunette, and she gave Kurt a playful glare and flicked his knee sharply. "You didn't do her justice at all Kurt. She dresses way cuter than you said." She sat up and smiled at Kate, curious to the point that it was obvious she heard some gossip. "Sooo… Where did you find that jacket? It's fantastic!"

Anna rolled her eyes and tucked her feet up into her chair in the corner. In a moment she had her phone open and was texting which seemed to improve her mood substantially.

Kate smiled at them hopefully. "Charles also told me I ought to spend some time with Tildie Sohmes. There are some frequent disturbances on her file… 'Complications with nightmares', it said. I was hoping you all could tell me a little more about them?"

"I saw one just before we were to leave to live at Mr. Warren's house," Piotr said, his broad shoulders slumped. "In the middle of the night, there was screaming and Kurt appeared in my room to wake me. We ran outside to see a flying beast glowing in the sky, as big as a house!"

Kate could tell he wasn't lying, but it still sounded unbelievable. "Tildie?"

"Yes. Her nightmares become real!" Piotr said. "We fought for half of an hour to defeat the monster and release her." He wrung his hands, elbows on his knees. "She was so terrified, but it was the only way to wake and release her from the monster."

Kate's eyes widened as she felt the regret coming off all of them.

"It's not that we want to scare her more," Bobby said quickly. "It's the only way we have to stop the nightmare once it takes shape. Not even Charles can stop one of Tildie's nightmare episodes unless she's distracted enough by us." He shrugged, obviously more used to the circumstances than Piotr. "A lot of times we can tell what gave her the nightmare, though, and that helps."

"We try hard to keep Tildie from being scared in the day so she doesn't have the nightmares," Kitty explained. "We use that plan for a lot of us here. I phase through the floors sometimes when I sleep, so I've learned to sleep on my side." She shrugged. "It helps a little. I can catch myself when I first feel my arm start to phase."

Kurt nodded. "For Tildie we do our best to monitor what she watches on television, on movies, and in our practices. Anything may disturb her and give her a nightmare."

Kate sat down next to Bobby on a couch facing Piotr, Kitty, and Kurt. "How does that make Tildie feel? I can see how she might struggle, hearing "no" all the time. How does she take to the special rules?"

Anna suddenly stood and shoved her phone in her pocket, blasting out noxious currents of hostility, resentment, and insult. "Special rules?! Everyone here has special rules, dammit. The world ain't no picnic for any of us, and even though XI ain't a party for us, it's a hell of a lot better than anywhere else."

Everyone watched as Anna finally tore her glare from Kate and stormed out.

Kate took a shaky breath as soon as Anna left the room. She felt like a fish plucked out of a poisoned pond and dropped into cold water, fighting to take in anything but the toxins of hate.

"I am sorry, Ms. Kate," Kurt said quietly. "My sister is just sensitive. She" –

Kate smiled gently, grateful for his sudden kind feeling. "It's alright, Kurt. I understand. I went through the files for this school year and I saw her power. I can see how my question might have offended her. Honest, I didn't mean it."

Piotr sighed. "It is hard for her to be not able to touch others."

"Unable, Piotr," Kitty said kindly.

Kate cleared her throat. "Where would the younger kids be now?"

Piotr stood up. "I will show you, Ms. Kate! Tildie will be there."

"Thank you, Piotr, I appreciate it." Kate smiled and stood. "A pleasure to meet you all." She followed Piotr out into the hall and down the main staircase, enjoying his friendly presence as they walked.

When Kate saw the elementary class the day before, they had come to her office. Now she stood in the elementary room with the six children under 12 that lived in the Institute. They were playing, studying, and helping each other. The fun made Kate feel light and cheerful, her heart speeding up gently in response to their activity level. She smiled when the teacher came to greet them. "Ms. Moonstar," Kate said, "I hope you don't mind me dropping in this way."

"Dani, please. You are more than welcome here. Charles told me you might be coming to address Azari and Tildie."

"That's my plan," Kate smiled.

She turned to the class. "Alright, everyone, you remember our friends?"

The kids all looked up and, in a broken chorus, greeted Kate and Piotr by name.

Piotr glowed with pleasure when the class of about seven children said his name. "The game you play is fun. Maybe you may teach me to play too?"

All seven immediately folded him into their games, completely thrilled to have the eighteen-year-old, mountain of a teenager playing with their toys.

Dani was thoroughly amused and smiled before turning back to Kate. "Now what can I do for you?"

"I'd just like to spend some time here observing and talking to them. It can be really hard to get a read on children when they're taken out off their routine."

Dani nodded. "I always appreciate an extra pair of hands with this crew."

Kate laughed. "I can believe that. Now, Tildie didn't come to my office yesterday did she?"

"No," Dani said, voice low. "The professor thought it would be safer if the others prepared her for meeting you later. She" –

Kate nodded. "I heard. Do new things set her off?"

"Sometimes." Dani looked at the classroom and nodded to the little seven or eight-year-old girl playing apart from the others. "That's Tildie. None of us really knows how to keep it from happening. I try to help. My power is similar, but then my dreams manifest, they usually have a purpose. Hers…" Dani shook her head.

Kate thanked her and went over to where Tildie was coloring. She was a sweet-faced girl with auburn hair. When she looked up at Kate, it showed she had a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks.

"Tildie?" Kate looked down at her, smiling.

"Yeah?"

"I'm Ms. Kate," she said kindly. "Can I play too?"

Tildie was cautious, but she slowly nodded and made room at her little table. "'K." The little girl's aura fluctuated in an odd, damaged way, each rise of excitement dropped by rises in worry and fear.

Kate knelt down and took the crayons she was given. After a few minutes coloring and talking about the picture Tildie was coloring, Kate saw she was doing less self-regulating and the currents were smooth. "Tildie?"

"Yeah?" she was giving a princess outline blazing red hair.

"Why aren't you playing with the other kids?" Kate was catching a lot of strange emotions off of the little girl. She was at least seven, but her emotions led Kate to put her maturity level lower. In a child around 8, Kate expected to feel a growing consistency in how they chose what balance of emotions to show. Tildie felt under that age, where her balance of emotion was erratic, but clearly aware of the fact that some emotions are good and some are bad. It seemed she was mistakenly suppressing some of the good ones as well.

Tildie kept coloring as they talked, covering the background in blues. She shrugged. "They act funny to me. They treat me different."

Kate felt the hurt Tildie felt, but there was such a chill of hopelessness to it that it made her sure Tildie knew why they were all doing it. The little girl feared herself.

"You know what?"

"What?"

"People do the same thing to me, too, when they learn what I do."

Tildie gave her such a look that no skill was required to figure out she was skeptical.

"Really," Kate assured her, coloring on her picture of a puppy with polkadots. "It seems people don't always like someone knowing how they feel about everything."

Tildie seemed convinced because shortly after that, she asked, "Do people tell you some things are too scary? In case of nightmares?"

Kate had to think how to answer that simply. "Sometimes. Nights are very hard for me too, Tildie. Every night is hard. Sometimes I have nightmares, and… sometimes I can be dangerous to people. I never mean to, of course." Kate let the little girl see she was really embarrassed and frightened of it. She tried to convince herself she was faking for Tildie's sake.

"It makes me feel like a monster," Tildie said. "They all keep scary things away, but they can't keep me away… I'm the scariest thing of everything."

Kate tried to keep coloring, but she recognized that feeling too well. "I understand…"

Tildie went quiet, coloring slowly with a brown crayon.

Kate hated to see such a sweet little girl shackled by her own talent this way. After a few moments with her crayon suspended over the paper, Kate suddenly set it down and smiled warmly at Tildie. "You know what?"

Tildie looked at her in surprise, a smile growing on her face from the excitement Kate was giving off to cheer her. "What?"

"I think there are lots of fun things you can try. Tildie. Lots of fun and new things to do. You shouldn't be afraid, sweetie," Kate said, tucking a curl of her auburn hair behind her ear. "You have every right to enjoy yourself as everyone else."

Tildie's eyes got big and flickered with hope. "Really?"

"Absolutely. No one can really stop nightmares, but we can make good things to dream about, right?" Kate smiled and stood up. She offered her hand to Tildie. "What do you say we go play with the others?"

Tildie hesitated a moment, but took Kate's hand and giggled. She felt like she was breaking some rule, but one she'd always wanted to.

It took a few minutes, but Tildie was soon included in the class' activities. Although Piotr left as soon as games were done, Kate stayed to support Tildie. Some of the time the little girl even sat on Kate's lap. Kate loved every second and gently pushed her to participate in what she was interested.

Story time excited her and she sat on the rug with the others, riveted, but one little boy couldn't sit still or keep quiet. Kate instantly recognized Azari Monroe.

The dark-skinned, six-year-old firecracker kept standing and acting out what he believed the story should say. "If I saw a meanie like that, I'd punch 'em like this! And kick him all hard an' everything! Like daddy does and" –

Dani lowered the book quickly as one little girl, the shape-shifter who turned into a dog earlier, barely ducked a swing of his little fist. "Azari! Stop that right now. No one can hear what the story is about until you sit down and listen with everyone else."

Kate felt the energy in him but everyone else could too. The little boy was practically sparking between his fingers. What concerned Kate most was his frustration. He was energetic, and not meaning to do wrong but he did show healthy levels of remorse when scolded. Unfortunately that did nothing for his rising energy levels.

He tried to sit but before Dani could even lift the book again, Azari was up and grabbing a toy plane whose propeller whizzed along at the touch of his electric powers.

Dani kept glancing at Kate, clearly glad someone else was seeing this, but embarrassed at her lack of control. "Azari!" she said sharply. "Sit down, right now!"

The other children fidgeted uncomfortably while Azari ran circles around them, flying the plane with his hand. Tildie watched uncertainly and looked at Kate, squirming.

Kate stood up and caught Azari's hand. "Hey, let's go fly that outside. What do you say?"

Azari tore his hand away, dropping his toy. "I'll be good! I'll be good!" He certainly knew what being in trouble looked like. He spiked with fear and remorse, backing away.

"Come on, Azari, we'll just go outside." Kate firmly clamped a hand on his shoulder and steered him out the door.

The little boy finally stopped pulling away from her, but instead had to vent another way. "Don't take me to Mom and Dad! I can be good, promise! Promise promise!" He grabbed her hand and pulled, but she knew this was no tantrum. A tantrum child would be angry, violent, and feel a glee from others' attention.

"I'm not taking you to your parents, Azari. I told you, we're going outside."

Just walking instead of sitting was easing him a little and he watched her with childish skepticism. "Yeah? Why?"

"You'll see," she gave him a smile which confused him more, but he did follow, chattering like he couldn't be silent if he tried.

Once outside, Kate picked up a soccer ball from a shed.

"Whazzat for?" he demanded, watching her. "You're a girl. Girls don't play soccer. We don't play in class time."

"Well, we're gonna play now." Kate bounced the ball back and forth on her knees a few times before kneeing it up to catch it. She offered the ball to the shocked six-year-old. "Want to?"

Azari jumped at the chance and after a few minutes he had healthy levels of positive feelings, and reduced energy levels. She easily brought him back in for more class time. Every few minutes, she stepped in and took him to the play area where he could vent some of his abundant energy.

She met with Dani again after the very full day with the elementary.

"Azari's never gotten so much from class," she told Kate. "What did you say to him?"

"Nothing, really. He's a good and smart kid. I think his mutation translates into more energy than he can contain." Kate smiled. "I think we can figure out some things he can do to vent and keep focused. We just need to make sure it's documented for when he goes to Baywood Elementary with the others."

"Discreetly, of course?" Dani asked.

Kate nodded slowly. "Of course." She sighed. "It would be so much less difficult if mutations didn't have so many social repercussions."

Dani raised an eyebrow. "Everything would be less difficult if that were true."

That evening Kate sat in her office opposite Charles, finishing her report of what she'd accomplished that day. "And I think Azari would do much better with a five minute break between recess times."

Charles smiled, his hands folded across his lap. "It sounds like a very reasonable solution, Kate. I'm very glad you got to meet Amara, Tildie, and Azari. You've made quite the impression on them."

"Thank you, Professor," Kate beamed. To her surprise, he turned his teacher's eyebrow on her.

"And what has been your experience today, Kaitlyn?" he asked gently. "How are you feeling?"

Being asked that made her feel uncomfortable, but she knew he only meant well. "I'm happy to say I feel healthier than I have in a long time. I feel satisfied and full… well not quite full, but I think it will take some time before I'll be… 'nourished', I guess is how I would describe it."

He nodded slowly, observing the daisies on her table and the spreading color on the petals. "Yes, that would be an apt description." He looked up at her again. "I was impressed with how you handled your discussion with Tildie. You related to her, Kate."

Kate looked down, kicking herself for even considering being so guarded in front of such a powerful psychic and a man she desperately wanted to impress.

"Kate?"

She felt he wasn't disappointed in her, but she was still reluctant as she nodded. "Yes. I do relate to her a little. I can't help it, especially after what's gone on between me and Warren."

He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn't want to have to compromise on her standards and she quickly told him so.

"I'll be in control, Professor, I promise. I know I can, and all I need is a few more days." Kate desperately tried to read him for confidence in her, and she found it though not as much as she hoped.

He nodded quietly, appearing to bite his lip to refrain from giving his prepared comment. "I understand. Tonight will be hard, just as it was yesterday. I highly recommend you use this evening to unwind and connect with the other staff members." He smiled encouragingly. "You know very well how much a support system can help in building a career and a life. That's what we're all here for."

Kate relaxed a little and nodded. "I understand, Professor."

She took his advice right away and eventually found Danielle was willing to go out on the town.

Kate did enjoy herself. Bar-hopping awhile and making a few new friends made her feel better. It did her so much good to laugh and joke and be around large numbers of laughing and joking people. Exposure to a wide variety of auras and emotional currents was enough to make her feel full and satisfied. For that time she wouldn't have to think about who was where, how many people were around, and she could let her own emotions play a part.

Unfortunately she knew the merriment couldn't last. It wouldn't even keep, not even an hour after she returned to the Institute.

Kate kept company until the others started turning in for the night. She thought briefly about going to her office, but she yawned so wide her jaw ached. Checking her watch, she realized miserably that she hadn't slept in 42 hours.

"I've got to at least try," she sighed to herself and climbed the main stairs. From there she walked down a hall to another set of stairs to the third floor.

The mansion was at capacity as far as bedrooms were concerned. She knew the professor wanted to help as many troubled mutant children as possible. Many of the instructors had bedrooms at the back of the mansion on the second and third floors. Since Kate came as a new addition, her room was on the north end in the corner, a small bedroom with only one window where most rooms had two. Many of the teachers lived in suites.

Kate was told this room was occasionally used to help troubled new students adjust to good treatment, new people, and three square meals a day. If she didn't know for certain all the other rooms were full, she would have been a little uncomfortable with what that implied.

It was an hour after lights out as she walked down the dark hallway. She slowed her steps, heart racing. She saw a shadow between her and the dimly lit window, giving off a low mix of worry, love, hurt, and resignation. Her voice gave away how afraid she was. "Hello? Who's there?"

"Katie?"

Kate relaxed, but only a little. "Warren? What are you doing? You should have gone to bed by now!"

He met her at her door, his wings tucked behind him but rustling a little in the silence. "You should have too, and last night."

Kate's cheeks flushed and she frowned, not only frustrated at the comment but also mad at his concern for her. It was coming welcoming, so receptive, mirroring her with such sympathy that it was too tempting. "Where did you hear that?"

"We work for a psychic, remember?" He took a step toward her, but she took a step back so she wouldn't be more tempted to siphon him for her swiftly dropping emotion levels. He paused. "I just want to know how you're doing." He put his hands in his pockets, disappointed but still very receptive to her. "And, I guess, to congratulate you on your day." He wanted her to come to him, she knew it.

Kate swallowed hard, dying to even grab his arm and establish the connection she was used to having each night, the flow between them of every emotion from glee to despair. Instead she steeled herself and cleared her throat quietly. "Thank you, Warren. And I appreciate your concern. Honest. I'll be alright though. I'm tired enough to sleep through anything." She was glad not everyone saw lies as clearly as she could.

He looked at her carefully. "I'm not so sure it matters how tired you are."

Kate sighed, frustrated. He clearly couldn't see how she was trying to protect him, how she was trying to sever this relationship. She was tired of him bouncing back even when he was so justifiably suspicious of her. "Just let me sleep, warren," she frowned, trying to get by him to her door. He blocked her.

"Kate, you know how you are when you wake up," he said, worrying for her. "You're pale, and fumbly, and kinda frantic…"

Kate, when she couldn't get by, looked up at him, done with this and cranky. "Warren!"

"You're not well when you sleep alone!" he insisted and she had to look away, frustrated since he knew her so well. He snuck a hand to her cheek and she felt herself desperately seek his internal emotional current. "I could stay tonight? If you need it?"

She could feel his current, strong and warm, full of all of the minute emotions he felt that day and more. She wanted so bad to raise some to the surface to share… but inside she screamed at herself in reproach. She pulled herself away and tried hard not to look at him. "No. I'll be fine, Warren. Don't worry about me! You don't have to sacrifice to fix me, okay? In a place like this I'm perfectly capable of making it through one night alone."

He frowned, taking offense. "But it's not just one night, not if you're staying to" –

"If I don't push myself, I'll never get through this!" she snapped. She regretted it and settled. "I'm sorry, Warren."

Warren was stung and looked away. "I'm sorry too." He looked back at her, gaze full of sharp bits of hurt for which she took whole responsibility. He held his arms open. "Just one? To tide you over?"

Kate sighed and nodded. She hugged him, but there was no romance in it. She knew some of it had been real, in the beginning, and it was always hard to feel love die. Instead she absorbed only regret, remorse, and pain, but it did fill her with a temporarily sustaining drop or two of emotion.

He let her go soon after and she went into her room feeling more satisfied, but colder and more alone than before.

She dressed in warm pajamas and lay in her chilled sheets. Only her deep breathing reminded her what relaxation was supposed to sound like.

As the minutes ticked by, Kate found it harder and harder to breathe. It was helpful to feel the dulled emotion of dreaming children, but it felt so far away. It was far too hard to continue siphoning emotion from down the hall, and relax enough to sleep.

After half an hour her lungs burned and her muscles ached like a solid cramp. Forcing herself up, she grabbed a big plush toy and fumbled in her purse. Her fingers refused to grip the pheromone bottle, but she managed to open the vented lid and dab the powerful scent onto the stuffed dog's collar. Gripping the toy, she managed to drift into an uneasy sleep, her cheek pressed into the fur and the bottle clutched half an inch from her nose.

Just as she felt her mind fixing on something other than the black back of her eyelids, she felt from somewhere in the mansion a cold tidal wave of fear suffocate her and she sat up with a gasp. Her room was empty and still, but Kate felt it full of surreal terror and confusion. Everyone in the mansion was awake and felt huge urgency about something, something serious.

Kate listened to the aggressive, oppressive fear and she heard a scream. She paled. "Tildie!" She grabbed her robe and ran out and down the hall past others who were running downstairs to stare out any window they could find.

The staff and high school level students were assembled outside and Kate ran out toward them. Before she could call out to them, she froze, staring. "Oh my God!"

Like the grisly product of a muddy rainbow boiled down with mud and anger, a monster as tall as the mansion itself heaved its translucent bulk toward them, crushing the turf down at least two inches under its clawed feet. It was built like a glob of muck with beefy arms and legs, but it was oddly see-through with the surface of its body sliding over itself like the filmy shimmer of filthy oil on water in the middle of a dingy parking lot. It turned just enough for Kate to see its eyes were as bright as a truck's headlights on bright.

Kate panicked and stared, not only because she had never seen anything like it, but because she felt Tildie inside that creature, being consumed by fear, frustration, and caught in the grip of a terrifying nightmare. She was also terrified to see many of the students using their powers against Tildie's monster, like they said.

Warren saw her and pointed to the house. "Kate, get back inside!"

Charles' voice carried and she caught a few words. "Bobby, Piotr, make sure to attack after Kitty and Kurt have coaxed her far enough from the walls. We can't have another collapse."

Ororo, who was no doubt the cause of a dense cloud cover, watched the kids dash off. "Where could Tildie have come up with a monster like that?"

Kate ran toward Charles, feeling Tildie's anger and fear grow to higher intensity, the monster roaring and shying from the eight powerful mutants pushing it away from the mansion. "What are you doing?!" she demanded, eyes riveted on Tildie as Bobby blasted ice under her feet, attempting to bring her down.

"Go inside, Kaitlyn. She's not being hurt. Trust us, please." He watched carefully, clearly giving orders for which he needed to concentrate.

"You're terrifying her!" Kate felt the scared little girl in the monster, humiliated and thoroughly upset. She watched the others strike, dodge, and attack. Each time the team scored a significant hit, the beast shrank some. Though it appeared to be succeeding in stalling the creature, Kate could feel a sudden rush of concentrated fear from the depths of the monster. It only struck with hands, feet, and loud roars. Kate blinked in surprise when she realized the monster had no teeth. "It feeds on fear! Charles, it feeds on fear!"

Charles was tuned into the team and didn't answer.

Kate got between him and the others, holding his shoulders. "Let me help! I know how to help!"

"Kate!" he said, serious. "This is not a safe place."

"I have a plan!" she insisted, "I do!"

Charles paused and Kate felt him poke around in her mind. He nodded quickly. "Alright. If you're sure."

Warren landed next to them. "What is it, Professor?" He looked at Kate, stunned to see her still there and suddenly intensely worried. "You should be inside!"

"She can help. Don't let the others stop it," Charles said. "Quickly!"

"Warren, fly me to Tildie," Kate demanded, standing in position and yanking his arms around her.

He took off on Charles' orders, holding her securely. Kate's belly lurched when he flew her, but her eyes were fixed on Tildie.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, keeping a safe distance from the monster.

Kate felt the others take notice, but their shouts weren't loud enough to be heard over Tildie's embodied nightmare. She could, however, feel Piotr's terror and dismay like a rope pulling her back to earth.

"Get me closer! Closer, Warren!"

"What are you going to do? Kill it with kindness?!" he demanded, only inching closer when she wanted him to dive at Tildie.

"Closer!"

Warren got just close enough and Tildie's nightmare locked onto her, snatching her from Warren.

Kate felt like a ragdoll with motion sickness, swung around in the monster's claw 20 feet above the ground. It was plenty easy to scream with as much fear as she could muster, but Kate did something she rarely did… she collected up the fear coursing into her from the monster and concentrating it. With a scream she directed a blast of it right back into its source.

Tildie's monster whipped its head around and roared into her face, blasting her with breath that made her choke. Suddenly Kate was plunged into the monster's mouth and everything went black.

Kate opened her eyes and saw a battle again, but it was different than the one she'd just left. Things swam in space, as if in a snow globe. Looking up, Kate could see the faces of Charles and Jean tapping on the glass making a deafening pound with each tap, so loud she had to cover her ears as hard as she could.

Below her Kate saw everyone from the mansion surrounding something, milling around in a loose circle.

Willing herself down, she passed straight through them, finding they were completely oblivious to her and immaterial at that. She walked completely through Kurt and Bobby as if they were no more than fog, and once past them she could see over the inner ring of the children of the mansion pointing, yelling, and running away.

There, in the center, was a miniature version of Tildie's nightmare monster. This, however, was Tildie in the flesh.

"Leave me alone!" she wept, covering her eyes with the rotund, drippy monster's hands. "I won't hurt you! Lemme go!"

Kate felt the little girl's terror and humiliation soak into and saturate the soft parts of her gut, weighing her down and making her heart ache with its weight. Taking her hands off her ears, braving the terrible pound of the psychic's probing, she ran to Tildie and threw her arms around her. "Tildie!"

She opened up her heart and let in all of Tildie's built up terror, shame, and humiliation. She let the connection, the shared current of feeling, establish between them, mutually feeding and reciprocating. Taking in Tildie's suffering, Kate fed in all of the affection and sympathy she had for the girl, giving her love and positivity.

Tildie relaxed in her arms and finally could cry. Kate, however, felt her face burn, her mind spin, and her heart race, weeping right along with the little girl. "I'm here, Tildie! Everything's gonna be okay. You're not a monster, Tildie. You're not alone!" Overwhelmed with the shared tears, she felt Tildie hug back and she dug deep for her sympathetic current, wrapping the little girl in it as best she could.

Kate felt hands on them, rubbing her shoulder. Voices came to her ears muted at first, but soon they cleared and she recognized them.

"Katie! Katie, are you alright?!" Warren asked, desperate.

"She has rescued Tildie," came Piotr's stunned, but smiling voice.

Even Scott chuckled. "Never would have thought it… She did pretty good."

Kate looked up, surprised to find she was on her knees in the grass and surrounded by the other staff members. Tildie was in her arms, her face buried in Kate's soft robe. Kate stroked Tildie's hair and pressed her cheek against it carefully. "Look, Tildie! It's over!"

Charles wheeled over to them and dispersed the crowd. "Give them some air, everyone." He smiled at Tildie. "Feeling better?"

She blinked away tears. "I'm sorry, Professor. I'm sorry…"

"Don't worry, my dear, don't worry at all." He looked up to the others. "Students, thank you for your help. Go on back to bed, please."

They left with each feeling differently about the experience, but Kate held Tildie still and felt only the evening measures of emotion as she responded to her exchange.

"What you did was really reckless." A man said, his arms folded across his chest, but Kate could feel surprise and some small receptivity related to respect. She instantly recognized Scott Summers from his file.

"Scott, stop," Jean said gently. "You were wonderful, Kate. We all appreciate it."

Warren was as much relieved as mad. "You could have figured some way of doing it safer, Kate."

Charles shook his head. "Are you alright, Kate?"

Warren turned on him. "Of course she's not alright! She just got eaten! Or was I the only one who saw that?!"

Jim Logan, another staff member Kate had to recognize from their picture, chuckled. "You got one impressive death wish, Doll."

"Listen!" Kate stood, letting Tildie hold her around her waist as she stood straight. "I find it hard to believe that after this long you've overlooked that Tildie is more scared at everyone being afraid of her than anything else!"

"Ms. Kate?" Tildie said quietly.

She looked down at her and stroked her hair, giving the little girl a warm smile. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. You had a pretty bad night, didn't you?"

Tildie nodded, feeling understood and loved. Her little smile warmed Kate all the way through.

Kate knelt down on one knee and petted her cheek. "You know what? I didn't have a good night either."

"Really?" she asked. "Nightmares?"

Kate shook her head. "I couldn't sleep at all. Tell you what, how would you like to come sleep in my room with me?"

Tildie's smile widened. "And I won't have nightmares?"

"We'll try it for a few nights. While you're with me, I promise, no nightmares." Kate smiled. "Cross my heart!"

"Okay!"

Kate stood up, feeling approval all the way around from the staff, especially Charles and Warren. Without waiting any longer in the dark night chill, she took Tildie inside and up to her room.

With the little girl hugging a plush toy and held in Kate's arms, Kate felt a sweeter, gentler connection than she'd experienced before. There was no deceit, no struggle, and no guilt. Tildie willingly shared Kate's aura, receiving from it security and rest, while happily offering Kate a well of sustaining emotion to balance out and absorb. She couldn't feel a bit of hungry strain in her body and she could breathe with ease and comfort.

Once Tildie was asleep, Kate heard Charles' voice in her head. "You have no more to be ashamed of than Tildie, you know."

Kate smiled wryly, thinking an answer. "Oh really?"

"Really. It's never an easy thing to accept when you have to rely on others. Some struggles, like yours and Tildie's, have very simple, obvious solutions… though unorthodox."

Kate smiled hesitantly. "Like Tildie only needing a hug?"

Charles had a way of communicating a smile without anyone there to see it. "Smart mouth. Kaitlyn, I don't want to see any of my students try to make it through tough spots alone."

"I thought I was staff, Professor."

His voice in her head was gentle and kind. "All of my staff are still my students. No one ever outgrows learning who they are and what they can do. Kaitlyn, you have a wonderful gift and, unfortunately, it can feel like a curse. So can many others. There is no shame at all in accepting natural solutions."

Kate let that sink in, watching Tildie sleep peacefully in her arms, willingly sharing her soft, sleepy satisfaction.

"Getting what you need to be healthy doesn't have to mean hurting or deceiving someone. Sometimes all you have to do is ask for a little help."

Kate nodded slowly, hoping that would be the truth. "I feel so confused."

"Sleep for now, Kaitlyn. Good night and we're very happy to have you."


	3. Exalted

The last ten minutes of the school day were Pietro Maximoff's nemesis. He prided himself on having a lot of enemies, but time was always the one he couldn't beat. For him, who could run on the edge of the speed of sound, and whose father was the most politically powerful mutant on the planet, the world just moved too slow.

He checked the clock again and swore under his breath. How much more could this man say about the Declaration of Independence? His gaze shifted around the room as he thought. All men aren't created equal; the mutant gene made some far better than others, thank God. If that didn't make the ideal a farce, the recent hate crimes against mutants through the first two weeks of school shot plenty of holes in the notion of equality.

He looked at the clock and swore again. His knee started to bounce subconsciously and he focused on tearing graded homework into little balls. Kurt Wagner set the normally quiet suburb of Bayville against mutants. A couple of days before school started, he had been idiot enough to get caught with his blue devil's tail out for the world to see. Everyone knew Pietro and his crew were mutants. He was no friend to cowards who hid from who they were.

With a stock of spitballs, Pietro shot one into the hair of another closet mutant. Bobby Drake shot a glare at him, but Pietro gave a grin and waved mockingly. Cowards, all of them. Running together, going straight from school to Xavier Institute, they were nothing. Not Pietro, not his group. They didn't hide, they took on haters all the time and sent them running.

When Bobby turned back around, Pietro grinned at his twin sister next to him for approval, but she hadn't been paying attention. Wanda sat calmly filing her nails, her shorts showing off her legs and expensive shoes. Unlike Pietro, she had wavy brown-red hair, and enjoyed good grades in school. She did, however, look over sympathetically at his thrumming knee which was now bouncing in a blur.

He looked up at the clock, feeling that at any moment he was going to explode his skin. Ten seconds… Five… When the bell rang he was out the door so fast it made the papers in the waste bin fly two in the air.

Freedom after classes was so fantastic, he couldn't explain. When he sat still too long every fiber in him told him to run, and run fast. He returned to the classroom after a lap around campus. He had hardly missed anything and met Wanda on the way out.

She grinned. "Feeling better?"

"Yeah!" he said, leaning on the wall. Bobby and the other XI kid in their class, John, were meeting up with the rest of their group. He looked at Wanda. "So good I think we should see the new 'mutant lovers'!"

She sighed and frowned. "Pietro, don't."

"Too late!" He laughed and zipped over to the XI kids, running into the back of Bobby's shoulder.

"Hey!" Kurt shouted, helping Bobby regain his balance.

"Aw, look who's finally come out!" Pietro said. "So what, you gonna hang out with us now? Come one, join our side, Kurt. You know we stand together instead of burying our heads in the sand."

"Sand?" Piotr asked. He looked at John who just shook his head instead of explaining.

"Shut yer trap, Pietro!" Anna said.

"It goes both ways, Rogue," Pietro snapped. "You left us, joined them… even your saintly brother can leave you for us!"

Bobby frowned. "Get lost and you won't get your butt kicked."

Pietro zipped right up to whisper in his ear. "Not easy being a 'mutant lover' is it?" He zipped away to Anna next. "All the gossip, the looks, the vandalism" –

Anna took a stomp at his foot, but he was too quick.

He was right back at Bobby. "Are you mutant lovers our friends now? You love us now, do you?"

Kurt frowned. "Leave us alone, Pietro!"

Wanda caught Pietro's arm. She was the only one who could. "Let's go. They've had enough."

John grinned. "Yeah, listen to your pretty sister, Speedy."

Pietro grimaced at him and then looked at Kurt. "Things'll just get harder, Nightcrawler," he said. "When it gets hard enough, you come to us."

Wanda gave Kurt a warm smile. "Our door is open… to you." She winked at him and Pietro frowned.

"You'll get old waiting for that," Bobby growled. "Come on guys, the bus is waiting."

Pietro stayed with Wanda while they walked down the hall, surrounding Kurt protectively.

"What was that about?" Pietro snuck an evil grin at his seductive twin.

"Nothing," she said innocently, a sure sign of a lie. "Take us home, brother."

He obediently picked her up and began the run to their house. "Seriously, what was it?" he picked, amused at her secretive effort.

"Since you ask, I think you were an idiot for picking on Kurt."

"An idiot? Oh, come on."

She had her arm around his shoulders as he ran at blurring speed. It didn't take a stretch for her to slap the back of his head. "Yes, an idiot."

"Only because you've got a crush on him," he grinned, teasing.

"Because he'd never pick on me like you do," she retorted. "Lay off, okay. He's got it really rough lately."

Pietro yielded the point while he slowed down several miles from the school. They zipped between trees in the surrendered old grounds of a vacant, high-end property. He stopped so they could unlock a gate hidden by years of overgrowth. The place was impenetrable for anyone who didn't know what they were looking for. More than that, it didn't look worth the attempt. Pietro and Wanda, however, easily arrived at the old guest house beyond a tumbled stone wall.

It was an impressive old Victorian, but since the mutant teens moved in it looked its age. It was not only a living space, but the headquarters for all of the missions commissioned by Pietro and Wanda's father. Most had resulted in police investigation, so the place was mutant-disguised and obscured. With that, they could continue serving his purposes in the area. Mostly that included keeping eyes on the Xavier Institute.

As Pietro ran up, he saw someone unfamiliar run out of the house calling his name. He skidded to a stop and saw her long green hair. His jaw dropped.

Wanda spoke when he couldn't. "Lorna!" she cried, beaming as their fourteen year old sister threw her arms around them.

Pietro hardly recognized her. Their father Magneto had two goals in life:: making mutants the rulers of the world, and spoiling his daughters. Wanda was trained as a force to be reckoned with as the heir to his legacy and the growing mutant country of Genosha. Pietro knew he was the top general of the armies. Lorna, however, was every inch a princess. He hadn't seen her in seven years, and that was the last time he had seen the shores of the Genosha. Back then the island was still an international backwater.

The little girl he remembered was now a fresh little teen. All her emails and letters didn't do her justice as she hugged Pietro with all she had. "Pietro, Pietro!" she squealed. "I came to visit you! Aren't you excited?"

It took a moment for him to get his voice, but he hugged her back right away. "Uh, yeah! Yeah!" he laughed. "How did-? When did-? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Lorna took his hand, dragging him into the house. "Come in, come in!"

Wanda smiled when Pietro looked at her for answers. Her shrug really didn't help, but his little sister was such a surprise he couldn't stop grinning.

His grin faded when, as they went inside he saw Julian Keller. Hellion.

Lorna skipped over to him, naïve as usual to how dangerous he was. All the mutants Magneto assigned to protect and dote on her were dangerous, the most elite force he had. "Hellion! Lookit who's home!"

Hellion was a powerful telekinetic, and a cunning young general in Magneto's upper level of leaders called the Brotherhood. As the Lesser Brotherhood, Pietro's team had to take orders from any one of them. "I see that." Hellion smiled his honeyed grin. "Why don't you get Toad and Blob to help you make some snacks?"

Lorna clung to Pietro's arm. "But…"

Hellion knelt to her. "I need to tell them some business from your father. They'll come back out to play, alright?"

Used to being handled with kid gloves, Lorna warmed to the request. "Okay!" She skipped off to the messy kitchen where Pietro's two drop-out lackeys were hiding.

Pietro could hardly believe she was there. It felt surreal. Magneto had never allowed their precious step-sister off of Genosha. Here she was, out of her ivory tower, and with him in the broken down house. By all accounts the place was a reeking excuse for a house thanks to unrestrained use of powers and the fact that Toad perpetually smelled of swamp.

Hellion stood. "Well, come on."

Pietro looked at her incredulously as they followed Hellion to another room, . "Did you know she was coming?"

Wanda smiled. "Yes, but not when."

In the old parlor, Pietro flopped onto the stained couch. "So what's the news, Hellion?"

Julian grimaced at him. "Orders, actually."

Wanda scolded her brother with a slap to his knee and perched on the cushion, elegant and dignified as usual.

He quieted, but kept grinning. Hellion may be strong, but Pietro figured he should be reminded who was a prince.

Hellion was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his late 20's. He paced slowly in front of them, hands clasped comfortably behind his back. "Magneto has a big plan in the works. Lorna demanded to come visit you both and this means someone has to watch over her. Since she wanted to see you both, I'm leaving her here with you."

Pietro heard the first part best. "A big plan?" He was on his feet again without noticing. "Are the X-men involved?"

Hellion raised an eyebrow. "That's classified. It's a matter of Genoshan National Security."

Pietro frowned. "Well fine, but if it's so big what should my team be doing to prepare? We've got a lot to give! What's our part? Do we have to work on anything specific? Any new objectives?"

Hellion checked his watch nonchalantly. "Just keep doing what you're doing." He collected an expensive jacket from the old coat rack and picked splinters from the fabric before putting it on. "If you'll excuse me, I'm late for a meeting with Graiton Creed."

"But" – Pietro said, confused. "That's it?"

"That's it." He took a thick packet from his jacket pocket and dropped it on a chair. "Funding from Magneto. Cheers." With that he left the room and the house.

Through the open parlor door, Pietro could see and hear Lorna riding the shoulders of the mountain of flesh that was Blob, and mocking Toad's scrawny frame and sour smell. As neither of those things bothered him, he looked back at Wanda.

"So that's all we get to do? … And who's this Creed guy? Is he one of ours?"

Wanda's face clouded. "Let it go, Pietro. We've got our orders." She stood and went out to keep Lorna from driving Blob through the wall.

Pietro glowered. If Hellion thought the Lesser Brotherhood would be useless except as babysitters, then he had another thing coming. Pietro's mind spun, imagining up how big a part he and his teenaged team would play in his father's work. First he had to find out what the plan was, and Graiton Creed was the first question to answer.

Pietro had learned from Magneto's legendary tactics that often the answers to your questions are in the hands of your biggest opponent. The lesser Brotherhood existed to keep an ear to the ground around Xavier Institute for those kind of answers. Once, Charles Xavier had been so close to Magneto that Pietro, Wanda, and Lorna had learned to call him 'uncle'. The gap had suddenly widened to the point that there were spies in place. The dear children of Charles' philosophy and Magneto's men risked their lives in defending their divided ideals.

A fight of philosophies left plenty of room for defection and persuasion. Pietro decided to go to one turncoat, John Allerdyce, who'd stayed on at XI as a spy on the inside. If XI knew who Graiton Creed was, John would know too.

Pietro also knew the XI students would be taking an after school field trip to the natural history museum in the city. Never one to wait, he picked up his jacket at the front door only to have the doorknob pulled from his hand from the outside. "Hey!"

Lance Alvers, one of the Lesser Brotherhood, came in still wearing his backpack from school. "Can it, Speedy," he said, pushing his way in.

Pietro's face burned. "Don't you tell me to 'can it'!" He zipped in front of Lance again as he strolled to the couch. "Where have you been?!"

Lance was the only other member of Pietro's team besides himself, Wanda, and a few occasional allies, that hadn't dropped out of public school. Where Pietro's grades weren't great, Lance's were always just a hair better. Besides out doing him in that, Toad and Blob had the nerve to like Lance better than him.

Lance flopped on the couch. "I ride the bus, remember genius?"

Blob lumbered in from the kitchen, Lorna perched on his mountainous shoulders. She had to duck deeply to avoid the ceiling. "Uh, Lance… Good!" He gave a relieved grin. "Didn't know when you were comin' back."

Toad, whose legs were more comfortable leaping low to the ground than walking upright, jumped from behind him. "School's done the same time every day, Fred. Get a watch."

As Blob looked at his wrist which was nearly a foot around, Toad leapt right past Pietro to the arm of the couch. "You gotta help us, Lance, she's crazy!"

Lorna glared at him and pointed regally. "Hey! Blobby, throw him! He's mean!"

When Fred hesitated she hit his bald head. "Do it!"

Toad screeched as he fled and Lorna rode Fred in pursuit, giggling.

Lance sat up instantly. "Hey, stop! Call off your sister, Pietro. Toad didn't do anything, and Fred's not a stooge!"

Pietro folded his arms and grinned. "He called her crazy. I'm not doing anything. And it's Quicksilver to you."

Lance opened his mouth to sass back, but he put up his hands and stomped after them.

Proud, Pietro figured he put the upstart in his place. Taking a minute to preen, he put on his jacket and adjusted his stark white hair in a cracked mirror in the hall. As he gave up flattening a stubborn couple of locks up front, Wanda came up behind him.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"Oh! Uh…" He smiled nervously. "To, um, the museum?"

She raised an eyebrow suspiciously, but to his relief she didn't ask more.

"Alright, then."

He relaxed and grinned, reaching for the door. "Be back sometime."

"Take Lorna with you."

Lorna heard and came skipping in, having lost interest in the pursuit. "Oh! Take me where? Will it be fun?"

Pietro's face fell. "But- I- Why?"

Lorna took his hand. "Where will we go? Can we get ice-cream?"

"She came to see you, Pietro, and Dad said to show her a _little_ of the world outside Genosha."

Pietro knew well enough his father wouldn't want any ugly truths to tarnish his precious daughter's trip. He sighed and smiled for Lorna. No's weren't an option, but sugarcoating wasn't Pietro's favorite activity.

"Fine. Museum first, ice cream later, okay?" he said, squeezing Lorna's hand.

Her smile was enough to melt his reluctance. "Yay!" She used her powers of magnetism, inherited from their father, to throw open the door. She hauled on his arm. "Let's go, let's go!"

Pietro grinned and scooped her up in his arms like he did for Wanda. "Let's go!"

Lorna gave a giddy squeal as they raced off in a blur to downtown.

Sure enough, the black van from Xavier's Institute sat in the parking lot. Pietro found the mutant teams on a tour led by a museum guide, but two of their teachers chaperoned. Pietro felt lucky the telepath Jean Grey had been replaced on this trip with some weak looking woman in a blue dress. No fighter would wear that.

Confident his little sister was occupied on an audio display nearby, Pietro caught John's eye. As the group was given time to look at an exhibit for a few minutes, Pietro waited behind a display.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" John hissed furiously. "Just being here you could blow my cover. You better have a damn good reason for this!"

"Shut up, Pyro," Pietro snapped. John was like Lance. Idiot kept forgetting who was boss. "Listen, the plan hasn't changed. I want you to tell me what this guy Graiton Creed has to do with it."

John grinned incredulously. "Seriously? Creed has everything to do with it! He's the leader of the Friends of Humanity… He's the richest, meanest, anti-mutant son of a bitch in the US!" He stood back and put his hands in his pocket smugly. "Geez, you don't know a thing, do you?"

Pietro flushed with fury. "Hey! I'm your contact here, so you gotta do what I tell you, got it?"

John was unintimidated, even scornful. He flipped a lighter and suddenly held a fist full of fire up to Pietro's chin. "Gonna run from this, track star?"

Pietro felt the flames lick at his chin and he stood on his toes doing his best to keep his authoritarian expression. "Get that out of my face."

John inched it closer by growing the flame, grinning maliciously before extinguishing his handful of flames. "Stay out of the plan and never contact me again." He left and rejoined the XI group.

Pietro exhaled, realizing with shame that he'd been holding his breath. He rubbed the stinging heat from under his chin and slipped out from behind the display.

Pyro didn't worry Pietro much, really. He was just a rebel, right? Any leader has his challengers and Pietro had him beat by bloodline alone.

What really kept his thoughts buzzing was the identity of Creed. He knew a few things. First, Hellion was known as a mutant only to a select group. Second, Creed would never associate with known mutants from what John said. Then he also knew it was usual for Magneto to employ the philosophy to "keep your friends close and enemies closer". After all, Magneto was a diplomat, politician, and philosopher, as well as a seriously powerful warrior. It was this final thing that puzzled him.

Spying on Creed was common sense, but Magneto's plans were never passive. John said Creed had everything to do with the plan. Creed had a bigger part and Pietro was at a loss as to what it could be. More questions to ask, for sure.

Pietro found Lorna near where he'd left her, but she wasn't alone. The lady he'd seen earlier was talking with her. Pietro hurried over, but at normal human speed so as not to give himself away. "Lorna!"

Lorna looked up and smiled. "Oh! See this is my brother Pietro who I told you about."

Pietro was bothered by the woman's open smile and blue eyes. She looked a little odd, sort of too innocent. He took Lorna's hand. "Come on, we're going now."

Lorna resisted. "No! I don't wanna! You're being mean." She smiled at the lady. "This is Ms. Kate! I like her, she's nice, and a mutant. Like us!"

Pietro looked at the lady a little more. It wasn't like an X-man to tell anyone their secret. "Oh yeah?"

She offered a hand and a smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Lorna's been telling me so much about you."

Pietro stared at her hand for a second, a long time for him, before hesitantly shaking it. This lady had to be an idiot, new, or both. She obviously didn't know who he was, or who Lorna was. For a second he considered recruiting her, but with that smile this woman had to be some kind of peace lover. No room for that in his ranks, not with a big plan coming on.

He chose to just limply shake her hand. "Nice to meet you. Come on, Lorna, we've got to go get you some dinner."

Lorna squirmed as he took her hand. "But I don't wanna go!" When Pietro didn't hesitate, she waved to Kate as he pulled her hand. "Bye, Ms. Kate!"

Clearly confused, the woman waved back. "Oh! Well… Okay. Goodbye, Lorna. Have fun!"

"I will!" After a few moments Lorna looked up at her brother. "Why didn't you like her, Pietro? She's nice and funny. If you let her talk, you'd-"

"Some mutants are different than others, Lorna." Pietro directed her to the gift shop knowing she'd be plenty distracted.

That didn't help. She only shook a snow globe and asked another question. "Can I have her?"

Pietro tried to think how not to say 'no'. "She belongs to the X-men, Lorna. If she knew who we were, she wouldn't even talk to us."

Lorna sighed, pouting. "I know daddy doesn't like them, but she was really nice. Couldn't everybody just get along? We're all mutant."

Pietro spun a little commemorative ball on his finger. "If everyone was mutant there wouldn't be a problem. Humans are the problem."

Lorna looked around. "How?"

"The X-men are human lovers," Pietro said with disgust. "As if humans hating them weren't enough, they fight with us for showing the humans who's boss."

Lorna lost interest in shopping and frowned to herself. "But if we're all mutant, we should get along."

"Well, that's how it is," Pietro said shortly, putting the trinkets back on the shelf.

After buying the toys Lorna had picked out, he ran her by an ice cream place and then got her home before it melted.

It was hard not to let Lance's insolence and John's cutting pride get to him. It might have deterred him, but nothing could. If he played an indispensable part in this plan, then no one could question who was boss of this team. He was the boss! He was the son of Magneto! He was a prince of mutants and he would make sure to be that from now on.

That night, he went to Wanda's room. He wanted to know, from her, where his country stood. She was always well informed, but Pietro also knew she had a heavy weight on her shoulders. She was the heir, after all.

"We're in trouble financially, I know that," she said as she lay on her bed. Hers was the only room in the house that was clean. It also had soundproof walls, floor, and ceiling.

Pietro lay at her feet on her large bed, thinking. "Trouble? But what about the bank?"

She pushed her hair from her shoulder as she shrugged. "The bank's fine. It's really done a good job. The issue is most of the county's capital is invested in the buildings of the city. All that art, the architecture, the technology sucked up millions in our funds."

Pietro traced the patterns on her comforter guiltily. "Wow…"

Wanda sighed. "Pietro… I don't think Dad's being very realistic."

"In what?"

"Genosha. The whole country." She played with one of the toys Lorna brought back from the museum. "We're so small. The state of New York is bigger than the whole island."

Pietro was worried about her tone. He rarely saw her so concerned and even less often heard her disagree with their father. "Size isn't really the problem," he said with a small smile. "England's tiny, but the whole world knows them."

Wanda smiled. "Think through that one. They have hundreds of years of history, generations of colonies, and at least ten times our population. They also have a society, systems, and authorities already in place to keep those citizens under control."

Pietro smiled. "We'll get there. The place is planned right."

Wanda looked troubled instead. "Honestly, it's more like a million dollar small town instead of the city we built it to be."

Pietro watched her, feeling bad he couldn't make her smile. She was the only person who cared about him for him, and he knew it was Wanda who would have to bear the incredible weight of ruling Genosha after Magneto. Alone like this, he was comforted to know she could show it for once.

She picked at the pillowcase. "I'm afraid, Pietro," she sighed. "We only have a few thousand people for our citizens, and I'm supposed to lead them? To where? For what?"

"A better life," Pietro said quickly. "Somewhere great and far away from humans who would mess everything up for them!"

"We're 17, Pietro. At this point, I hardly know if I can govern myself, let alone a new country full of people older, stronger, and more intelligent than me."

"Hey!" Pietro threw a pillow at her. "I want to debate that." He smiled encouragingly. "You can outclass everyone in that stuff!"

She threw the pillow back at him with a little smile. "You're biased." His success was fleeting as her melancholy returned. "Whether or not I can lead won't matter if Genosha goes bankrupt."

Pietro frowned, noting her worry. "Is it that bad?"

Wanda looked down and sighed. "I shouldn't doubt Dad. He's always got a plan for everything. We've been pretty successful so far."

"He wouldn't let anything happen to Genosha," Pietro said firmly.

"I just wish more people would take us seriously!" Wanda said, suddenly upset. "We'd change all their minds if they just gave us more credit as a country instead of as the world's mutant prison colony! Right now we're becoming the home base for criminals. We don't mind refuges, but we can't afford the rap for all the runaway hooligans trying to get off from the law."

Pietro frowned, surprised how much of an issue it actually was.

Wanda saw the look and settled some. "It's not that we don't want to help, but we can't be a free ticket to every mutant who claims discrimination. I don't want to rule villains. We're already enough of a joke to the diplomats of the world."

It hurt Pietro to see Wanda bothered. Lorna was experiencing a little of it despite how sheltered she was in Genosha with Magneto. Pietro shared their dream of a safe, accepting place for mutants. He dreamed about living there, happy with his sisters.

"Wanda, if I can do anything to help, you know I'll do my best." He took her hand to give it a squeeze.

She smiled gratefully, but shook her head. "No offense, Pietro, but how could we fix this?"

"Well I'm here at the root of it all," he said. "Most of the mutants having a bad time here, down on the lower levels, think pretty highly of Genosha."

Wanda listened with a bit more interest. "Oh? How?"

"To a lot of them it's like a promised land. Visuals are even more for it. As long as they're informed they generally talk about it like a homeland. Not just the shunned ones either. A lot of them have had lots of school."

He was glad to see she was comforted by his words.

She patted his hand gently. "Maybe… Maybe after this plan of Dad's you'll get to come home?"

Though it sounded wonderful to him, Pietro grinned nobly. "I'll stay anywhere to help Dad, you and Lorna, and Genosha."

She smiled sadly and he softened.

"I'd really like to come home," he said quietly, "even just for a visit."

That next day Pietro rolled out of bed late, having stayed up talking to Wanda. Dizzying spots danced before his eyes and he felt his muscles shake. Breakfast. He dashed downstairs and quickly stuffed a spoonful of peanut butter into his mouth. Eating usually helped stop the shaking and dizziness, but he had to sit awhile to let it work. While he did, he heard Lorna ordering Toad and Fred around in the yard. Sounded like they were playing some odd version of house.

Pietro happily sucked on another spoonful of peanut butter. It was about time those two slackers were kept on their toes.

An envelope on the table came into focus as the food helped Pietro's system settle. He picked it up and read the post-it on the front. It was Lance's writing.

"Note left on the door. Be back Monday night."

Pietro snorted. Lance was always bugging out on weekends. Didn't matter too much to Pietro, though. The less he saw of that cocky upstart the better.

The handwriting on the envelope mattered a lot, however. Pietro grinned mischievously. This might just be his ticket to finding more about Magneto's big plan. The curly script read "Julian" and it definitely belonged to Emma Frost.

He heard the door open and he zipped into the hall, grinning at his good luck. "Hey Hellion! How's it going?" he asked, hiding the envelope behind his back as he leaned on the doorway.

Julian straightened his coat. "I'm here to check on how things are going with Lorna's visit. I won't be here long." He ran a hand through his hair and looked at Pietro suspiciously.

Pietro gave his best toothy grin.

Julian shook his head. "Idiot. Has anything come for me?"

"As a matter of fact," Pietro held up the envelope and said, loud enough for the whole house to hear, "you got a note from Emma!"

Toad and Fred came in. Just as he hoped, Julian's face clouded and he glowered.

"Emma Frost?" Fred said, his perpetual expression of 'what?' holding a little excitement.

Toad leaped over with his ridiculously powerful legs. "Hott damn! Betcha it smells like her." He grinned with pleasure and made a grab for the note. "Lemme see it!"

Julian grabbed Toad by the neck, flinging him away. "Sick little beast." He frowned at Pietro. "Give it to me."

Fred chuckled slowly. "Doesn't she like Cyclops?"

Pietro made a shocked face, glad the Blob brought it up. "Oh! That's right. Aw, poor Hellion."

Pietro knew Hellion could easily tear him apart, but Pietro was playing on his pride. As he expected, Julian hardened.

Hellion's voice was low and lethal. "Come with me, you little bastard, and bring the note."

Glad to have provoked him, Pietro zipped to the next room and leaned against the wall.

Julian closed the door behind them and his anger obscured his handsome face. "What is your problem?"

Pietro lifted his chin haughtily. "I want information."

Julian frowned. "That note's important and you're holding it for a question?"

"Answer it and I'll let you have your 'important' note. Just the one question and a legit answer." He raised his eyebrow and held up the note with the handwriting facing out.

"Fine. What the hell."

Pietro nodded. "What does Magneto want with the Friends of Humanity?"

Julian was surprised by the question, but he shook his head firmly. "All I can say is some plans of mutant-kind's enemies have the potential to do Genosha a favor."

"Well that's a crap answer," Pietro snorted. "What plans? What kind of favor?"

Hellion lost patience and his eyes glowed.

Pietro couldn't hold onto the note if he tried. It leapt out of his hand and into Hellion's. It was a parlor trick compared to Hellion's real power, but it served his purpose.

Hellion pocketed it. "Treat your step-sister well, or I'll have to follow my orders. You're responsible for her."

He left, and Pietro might have been mad, but he wasn't. He'd gotten something important. He knew it was important from Hellion's reaction, but didn't he know what to do with it. And he was still without a lot of important detail.

Later that day Pietro was picking up on some real activity. Julian was calling more, there was an agitated feeling at Baywood High School, and the anti-mutant feeling in town was spiking. He could tell because he racked up three more detentions than usual.

When they did get orders from Julian, Pietro knew for sure it was business with the big plan and he was eager to be a part of it. Julian only gave them what to do on that upcoming Wednesday, but Pietro went over orders again and again to try and figure out more of the whole plan.

Wanda was to be in the school's front office at the passing period to lunch. 11:55 am. Pietro was to know where Bobby and the X-men kids were at all times.

Lorna would still be at the house, safe. That was predictable. The rest of the team would be at Pietro's disposal, keeping an eye on everything in the immediate area of the X-men kids.

After Julian gave them the orders, he warned them he wouldn't be coming around for quite a while. He even initiated phone black out. No calls for any reason.

Pietro, as soon as he heard the orders, couldn't have cared less about Julian. These orders were very similar to others he'd received for years. He and his team had played the distraction a hundred times before, and Pietro had this role down. This time, though, he was determined to go above and beyond.

On the weekend and early in the week, he drafted up some new drills and drove his sluggish team out on the lawn to drill harder and longer than before.

Lance gave a half-hearted effort at best and it infuriated PIetro.

"Hey! Avalanche!" Pietro ran up to him and all but yelled in his face. "You get your ass in gear!"

Lance frowned, but didn't back away. "This is stupid. I'm tired of getting thrown at the X-men just so your big shot daddy and his friends don't have to get their hands dirty."

He then turned his back and walked off.

Pietro fumed and chased him down. It wasn't hard. Before he could take more than two steps, Pietro was in his face again. "We have a big role in this, don't you get it?! All of us, we're the only thing standing between the X-jerks and the biggest thing to happen to mutants in years!"

Toad's eyes widened as he listened. Lance wasn't convinced, but Fred was starting to listen.

"We're who Magneto put at the front lines! We have this job and we'll pull our weight for everyone who's had to put up with all this human shit. It's been hell these last few weeks! I don't know about all of you, but I want to be ready if we get the chance to show 'em what we're made of!"

Toad threw his fist in the air. "Yeah!"

Fred fiddled with his thick, sausage-like fingers. "I dunno. I don't like takin' hits. It hurts."

Pietro was about to give him a shout, but Wanda stepped up.

"It's a big deal. What we do affects how other mutants feel about who they are and what they can do. We're strong! We're going to practice so we can stand up to all the humans who want to control us!"

"You say that real nice, Wanda!" Toad was starry-eyed.

She grimaced and zapped him with a "magic" bolt from her hand.

That made Pietro grin. He was fired up. He knew what he wanted to do and he was glad to have Wanda with him.

They cooperated despite Lance stalking off, and Pietro sat up late on Tuesday night with a map of Baywood High School. He ran through his plan over again, even using colored markers to remember the movements he'd ordered. No X-men member at Baywood would get away with anything this time. Every one of them would be prevented from interfering come 11:55!

"Pietro?"

Pietro blinked out of his focused state. "Huh?" He saw Lorna at his door and he smiled. "Hey pretty girl. What're you still doing up?"

She came in and climbed up next to him on his squeaky bed, comfy in her pajama pants and heart patterned tank top. "I was worried about you."

"About me? Ha!" He put his arm around her narrow shoulders. "I should be worried about you instead. 14 year old princesses need to be in bed before 10."

"Everyone's upset at you, Pietro," she said sadly. "They're mad you're making them work so hard."

He smiled, touched she'd be concerned. "They're mad at me a lot. I'm the boss, so it's part of my job to make them do things they never would. Besides, this is important, Lorna. We're a big part of Dad's plan." He smoothed her hair to try and make her worried expression disappear.

"But…"

"If I do a good job, Dad will notice, Lorna. We're going to be the facing enemies of all mutants, not just people against Dad and Genosha."

She sighed. "Why? Why are there 'enemies'?"

"An ugly little truth, sister." He kissed her forehead. "But that's not for you to worry about, right?" He smiled and she nodded slowly. "I'll protect the team. That's why I've been working them. If we practice, we'll be ready no matter what!"

Lorna nodded. "Good. You'll be safe too?"

Pietro softened. Lorna and Wanda were the only people who would be worried about him. He always struggled with how to take that. "I'll be okay."

"And will you promise something? Don't hurt other mutants. Remember, they're Brothers and Sisters too."

Pietro thought about the X-men kids and couldn't promise her that. Instead he smiled gently and petted her green hair. "It'll be alright, Lorna. I promise I'll be good. Okay? For my favorite little sister."

Lorna smiled and kissed his cheek. "I love you, Pietro."

He couldn't help giving her a hug. Those four words were so wonderful, but so unfamiliar. "I love you too, little Lorna." He formed a smile and let her go. "You go get to bed so I don't get in trouble for keeping you up!"

She giggled and got up. "Okay! Good night!"

Pietro watched her skip out of his room and sighed. She was so lucky, floating in her protected world where everyone loved her and told her so. He felt lucky to have her for these few days. Even though the biggest assignment he'd ever been given was that next day, he did wish he, Wanda, and Lorna could have done more together.

Dwelling on that didn't help, so he went back to work. Hell, he thought, maybe if he knocked this one out of the park, then he'd finally get to spend some time in Genosha. He fell asleep dreaming of how it would have changed after 7 years.

The next day Pietro watched the clock like it would suddenly go backward. 11:52. So close! His heart raced, his stomach churned. He was convinced he could do more to help if he only knew what was going to happen.

Pietro hadn't seen Lance. That goof-off had probably ditched. Pietro was mad over that, but he'd get back at him later. Now was time to focus. He'd take Lance's position tailing the X-men.

John wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. Pietro watched, just in case something should clue him in on where all of this was going.

At 11:55 the bell rang and Pietro nearly jumped a foot in the air. Any second now. From anywhere some Humanists could come blasting in, or the X-men could duck out and escape his watch.

Wanda had already been called to the office and Pietro for once forced his body to go slow as he gathered his stuff and followed the X-men out.

It puzzled him they were all totally at ease. They were all talking about what was on the menu at the cafeteria.

"Hey, I left a book in math class," John said. "I'll catch up, ok?"

Bobby turned as John headed back past Pietro. "Better hurry or Kurt will eat all the burgers!"

That got a big laugh.

John met Pietro's eyes as he pushed past him, and his expression made Pietro nervous. He was a cocky jerk, yeah, but John shot him an odd grin and a 'see you later' jerk of the head.

Pietro couldn't react, not when he heard the X-men get quieter in their talk. When they did that they were usually plotting and he thought for sure it was something important.

"Bet you he's up to something," Bobby was muttering.

"Leave him alone," the big Russian said. "He may walk where he likes."

"Not on my watch," Bobby snorted and they turned into the big crowd of hungry students. "Hey! Speedy!"

Pietro couldn't understand why he hadn't gotten some signal by now.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!" Bobby said. "Why are you following" –

A sudden deafening bang made the hall silent for Pietro. There was a flash of fire and a blast that tore apart the hall in front of them, bringing walls crumbling down on the crowds of students. Pietro was knocked flat and so were the XI students.

Pietro couldn't hear anything but a high-pitched whistling as he opened his eyes to dust clouds, screaming faces, and a wall that had fallen just short of his feet, bulked up over Piotr's metal form hunched over as many people as he could protect.

Then there was another blast! He felt the shock wave and the flashes. Pietro's mind spun as outside light poured through the massive hole in the school's wall onto the pile of rubble and torn up backpacks of students.

Run! It was the only thing Pietro could think and he found himself struggling to his feet and fumbling outside. Everything was a haze of dust, glaring sun, and people running toward the hole in the wall.

Pietro ran off, zipping with as much direction as he could muster toward the front office where Wanda was supposed to be. Red, blue, and white lights got close on the roads, but he could only hear his own breathing and the high-pitched whistling in his ears. He couldn't wrap his head around the multiple explosions and the damage.

As he turned to see another more serious blast hole, Pietro tripped. At his speed, he fell and rolled over and over on the lawn. Halfway through his tumble, the sound came back and he clamped his hands over his ears against the screams, shouts, and sirens coming from every direction.

He heard cries for help, cries of panic, anger, and pain coming from all over. The sirens of fire engines and squad cars jolted him from his stupor. He had to get away before he got tangled up in this mess!

The main office was untouched and he was sure Wanda hadn't been in the danger zone, so he took to his heels and dashed almost too fast for the eyes to see back to the Brotherhood house. At that speed he avoided anyone asking him questions. Instead he singled in on the hope his sisters were safe and sound.

When he arrived, he didn't pause before dashing upstairs toward her room. He slammed open the door. "Wanda!" The room was empty, but he heard the news turned up on a TV.

-"to be a group of anti-mutant activists calling themselves the Friends of Humanity. Our reporter, Chuck B-"

Pietro's heart raced and his mind spun. This was their plan? Bombing a school and- How would this help?

Pietro shoved the falling pieces of the truth from his mind. Wanda. Where were Wanda and Lorna? He saw a note on the bed and he snatched it up in a blink, reading out loud.

"Wanda, Lorna, and John are on the Genoshan ship Polaris on their way to the palace for safe keeping." Pietro was relieved to hear his sisters were far from danger, but…

He sat down, holding the note and looking at it although it was no longer in focus. John. His sisters and John got called to Genosha for protection. Pietro was alone. Not only that, he wasn't warned. He was told to follow the X-men kids, and if he'd even been a few steps nearer he might have been killed by the blast. He looked up and felt like he had a cold hand squeezing the life from his heart. He'd been passed over, again, by his father. He was left in the line of fire like a common pawn.

The news footage playing downstairs got Blob and Toad running up. "Hey! Hey boss! What happened?"

"Yeah, what" –

Pietro stood furiously. "Shut the hell up! I don't know, so leave me alone!"

They looked at him, confused. "What?"

"Get OUT!" Pietro grabbed a lamp and flung it with all his might.

The two thugs dodged the glass shards and fled downstairs while Pietro screamed at them. He didn't know what he was saying. He was barely even aware he was crying as he fell back to sitting, the news rattling on as more devastating attacks were reported.

"We are receiving reports of fatalities at public schools in Maine, Georgia, Tennessee, Maryland, Vermont, Colorado, Missouri, California, Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Texas..."


	4. Divided

The poker game broke up about two am. Remy was satisfied with the outcome. Normally he sent the other players out of the smoky back room with empty pockets, but this time he came out ahead with the players eager to play again.

Remy put his glass down on the table and put on his long coat, the last to get up. "Played good, Jacques," he said, tucking his winnings in his pocket.

"How d'ya know when Ah'm bluffin', LeBeau?" he asked, tucking his own smaller roll out of sight.

Remy chuckled as he followed him out. "Ah can't tell y'dat, Jacques, ah got t'keep mah secrets!"

"Ain't fair, y'know," Jacques retorted, lighting a cigar under the streetlight. "Game was fair, but it ain't right you dealin' fah Boudreaux an' da Assassins."

"It's hell, but ah ain't talkin' 'round it no more," he said turning down the offer of a cigar. A shadow caught his eye and he lowered his voice. "Go on, Jacques, ah gotta deal wid da devil."

Jacques glanced at the shadow. He blew out smoke, shaking his head. "Julius be in a foul mood t'night, LeBeau. If y'need me, ah'm always 'round."

Remy clapped a hand on his shoulder as he left, staying put as Julius Boudreaux prowled into Jacques' place beside him.

Julius was the same height as Remy, but carried himself like he was as tall as they came. "What's da cut, LeBeau?"

Remy was only 18, but he dealt cards like a shark for the den Boudreaux ran. He dug out the bill fold. "Came out up as always. Got mah 20%. Ah" –

Julius snatched the wad of cash, clamping his fist over Remy's painfully. "All of it."

Remy glared at him, tightening his grip on the money. "Hey, ah won it, an' Ah did it fair an' square. 20%."

Julius grimaced and blasted Remy with a waft of rum-laden breath. "Mah place. Mah dealah. Mah cash."

Remy weighed his disgust of the man and the price of that money. A small $2100 and breaking Julius' teeth would cost a feud, the murder of his father, and most likely his own life. Taking a breath, he loosened his grip. "Ya' cash."

Julius grinned and suddenly gave Remy's wrist a blindingly painful twist, clenching the money in his fist. "Damn right, LeBeau!" He pocketed it and walked off. "Watch y'self, mutant boy. Ain't safe fer ya' kind 'round here no more!"

Remy only checked his wrist after Julius left, letting a pained hiss out through his teeth. It didn't look as bad as it felt, and thankfully it was still functional.

He hoped no one saw, and he looked around for any bystanders. Thankfully there weren't any, but that wasn't typical in New Orleans.

As he headed up between two buildings to the narrow cobbled street, the common crowd was out. The street lights pooled on the stones in front of the narrow sidewalks and the wrought iron railings of the buildings there in the French Quarter. The lonely strains of the last jazz horn sang out before dawn from a street corner as he greeted the blind psychic in her window who waved before he spoke. Old Darius was starting his early morning baking and Remy walked slower past the storefront for the smell of the biscuits and beignets. The city did make him smile.

It had changed some, especially lately. He knew several mutant newcomers who couldn't walk about as freely as him. Even then, he was better accepted at night. He and others had to take advantage of the fringe life to make a living… as gamblers, artists, and whatever specialized work they could get with their unique talents.

Remy wound around the city. It was quiet now since even the streetcars weren't running. He slipped between buildings to take alleys he'd been stalking since he was a child.

Once his mood evened out after Julius, he took his phone from his pocket and checked the messages. He had two phones, one for the Boudreaux business and Julius' sister Bella Donna, the other for friends and family. Most of all, his second phone was for Anna.

A message was on it and he smiled, quickly putting it to his ear.

Anna's voice came on with its sweet Mississippi swing. "Hey Cajun! Y'gotta tell me how the game went t'night, an' if y'got home safe. Text me, or Ah'll come down there an' beat you silly!" Remy chuckled when he heard her laugh. "You be good, now, an' we'll talk in the mornin'." She finished with a kiss into the receiver and he was beaming even when the message clicked off.

"Damn, Cher," he grinned to himself and dialed back. Just as he expected, it went straight to her voicemail. After the tone, he left a message. "Good girl, Cher, goin' t'bed like y'should. God, Ah love hearin' ya' voice! Poker went fine, don'cha worry. Ah'm headin' back t'da 'partment now, but ah'll be up by six t'wish y'good mornin'. Sleep well, mah Cher." His smile softened and he wished she could be there. "Ah love ya, mah Cherie." He quietly hung up, aching for her. He deeply felt the long year it had been since her last visit, but hearing from her was too wonderful to dwell on the emptiness that followed.

While he'd been on the phone he'd about finished his walk. He took a turn down a dark street where someone had shot out the street lamp. He headed toward the only lights on the block. They were the dull glowing windows of his apartment complex.

The place weighed him down, especially seeing filthy people eye him as he walked around to the fire escape in the back. Girls with wailing babies on their hips watched every man with skeptical eyes and the men weren't always the most stable in the head, in Remy's experience.

Once around back, he used one of his mutant gifts. Charging the kinetic energy in his feet and the ground, he gave a short run and took a graceful ten foot leap onto the second floor landing. Straightening up, he pulled his key and unlocked the door to number 227.

The lights were on inside and it smelled like cigarettes. He frowned, irritated. Bella Donna was already there. Julius' younger sister got anything she wanted, and almost three years ago she decided she wanted Remy. He knew some people on the outside thought he should be grateful. She was from a powerful family, he lived on her money, and he had a job. In reality she was spoiled, abusive, and if he left her his father would be murdered. A big part of the draw for Bella Donna was Remy was the adopted son of a rival clan of criminals.

Remy heard the shower running and he shed his coat as quietly as possible, hoping she wouldn't be hungry for attention. The last time she'd come to his hovel for the night, he had long scratches that bled and she'd bitten him and left marks. She was a cruel 16 year old mess.

There was no avoiding her eventual demands except refusing to sleep with her. He'd been trying that lately. It had been enough to shock her, but he still wanted more strength to hold up against her. Remy went to the tiny kitchen and reached up to his hidden bourbon bottle.

A couple of shots later he sat on the couch. He felt odd. Two were generally just enough. But he felt off. Dizzy, fuzzy. His vision swam and his arm went the wrong way when he tried to touch his face to feel if it was still there.

A slim tan shape absorbed his vision and settled on his lap, wrapping around him before everything dissolved from focus.

The pounding in his head woke him up. The dark back of his eyelids seemed to throb, but when he opened his eyes the dim light in the bedroom was ten times worse. "Oh God," he moaned and put his forearm over his eyes.

When he moved, he realized he was far from alone. He peeked out the corner of his eye to see Belle clinging to him, her arm draped over his chest.

It made him so nauseous he just prayed his insides would stay in. He hauled himself from the bed and about ran his head into the wall, feeling the world pitch and reel under his feet.

"Somethin' else was in dat bourbon," he thought, steadying himself and blearily looking for his boxers. "She got t'it first… damn it! Nevah nevah ag'in!" He pulled on his boxers, noticing the new scratches on his body.

He looked back at Bella Donna in the bed snoring with her narrow self and blonde hair sprawled out. To anyone else, she'd be attractive. They could have her. He would happily send her and her selfish, violent moods and underhanded tricks anywhere he wasn't.

Remy slowly made his way to the couch and collapsed on it, his mind still fevered and head pounding. "It's pas' six. Ah missed Anna's good mornin', an' she's prob'ly losin' it. God, why?"

A voice, familiar and supportive, cut through in his mind. It was Professor Charles Xavier. _"I'm so sorry, Remy,"_ he said _. "Are you alright?_ "

Remy was immensely relieved to have a friendly thought, but he limited himself to a small grin. " _Ah'm okay, Professah. Been awhile._ "

" _You're not alright, Remy,_ " he replied. " _Don't lie to me. She drugged you?_ "

" _Yeah, she got t'mah bourbon. Her bruddah rip me off too. Not mah bes' day. Tell Anna ah really didn' mean t'miss her at six._ "

" _She knows_ ," Charles assured him. " _You know you are always more than welcome here, Remy. You have always had a place with us_."

Remy heaved a sigh. " _You know ah can't do dat, Professah_."

" _I know. You're right to protect your father. But if and when the day comes that you need to run, this is your safe place_."

He smiled. " _Safe's a fairytale, Professah. Safe is somethin' ya make for yahself_."

Charles' mental chuckle danced in Remy's mind. " _Or safe is something people create for one another. This is part of why I contacted you._ "

Remy carefully got up, feeling he was dreadfully thirsty. " _Y'all need somethin'_?"

" _We have some information that there are some anti-mutant activities going on in your ar_ ea," Charles said, " _and it's a growing trend. Have you noticed anything like that?_ "

Remy chugged at a water bottle, avoiding the sour milk in the fridge. " _You say it, Professah. Da place ain't as friendly, an' the Assassin Guild's mood t'us is sourin' more an' more_."

" _Have you noticed any new influences in New Orleans?_ "

" _Some_ ," Remy admitted after some thought. " _Ah seen some strange folk hangin' out with Julius an' his men._ "

" _I know you have a full plate_ ," the Professor said as Remy headed to the shower, " _but it would mean alot if you would find out what you can about who and what is in play down there_."

Remy stepped into the hot shower and let it run over his head. " _You got it, Professah. Ah was hopin' to get t'da bottom of dis nasty feelin' mahself_."

" _Keep safe, Remy_ ," Charles said kindly. " _And keep us informed_."

Remy smiled to himself, pleased at his concern. " _Y'can bet on it_."

That night, Remy arrived at the wharf where he'd heard the meeting was happening. The Professor had told him about a possible meeting having to do with the anti-mutant groups, and he'd confirmed it with a few questions to the right people in the city.

It was a dingy, foul-smelling place, especially in the dark where he was glad he couldn't see what his boots might be slipping in. Just the smell of the industrial shore soured his stomach, and he slid quickly from shadow to shadow toward the warehouse he wanted.

Scoping it out, he figured the right window was the only one lit. It sat high above the wharf in the isolated top rooms.

Remy looked over the building with its sheer wall and rusted out pieces of fire escape. The saltwater wind and damp air did a number on metal like that and he had to look elsewhere for a way up.

A smaller building nearby had a reasonably high roof, but Remy could handle that. He took a small, silent run and charged the ground when he leaped. He landed silently atop the building and quickly spied a wider window nearer the warehouse window. Another leap and his fingers caught the ledge. Swinging up, he skillfully sized up the final leap to the top of the warehouse and took it.

Directly above the window, he held still for some time to be sure he wasn't heard. He breathed silently and his touch was light on the roof to allow no betraying creaks. After a few long minutes of silence, he retrieved a listening device from his pocket; a suspended microphone hooked to a recorder and a single ear piece.

Remy situated himself behind the edge of the roof and lowered the mic level with the window, tucking in the earpiece.

"We're bein' overrun," a deep voice was saying, and Remy pegged it as a more Tennessee tilt, not a local creole blend. "Aint' no way them mutant filth gonna run our world, y'see? All them be rackin' up friends'n followers what get sucked int'thinkin' they be jus' like us. Ah tell ya, it ain't so!"

Another voice chimed in, a woman, adding to the voice of the first. "Some ain't the kind y'can see bein' mutant. They be unnatural smart an' some been learnin' t'use their freak skills t'get b'tween good folks an' what be rightly theirs. They been swayin' folks, an' up north a city fell so deep fer their tricks, a mutant lookin' like a blue Bigfoot got elected t'public office! He ain't there but t'look after his own!"

Remy heard Julius next, grumbling his agreement. "Ain't what we want nowhere. Ah lean wit' y'all, but ah ain't worried 'bout no place up north. Deal me straight, what do y'all want wit' me an' mah city?"

It sickened Remy to hear Julius speak so boldly of New Orleans. Even ole Boudreaux, the head of the Assassin's Guild and Julius' father, would have a few things to say about that. If the people in the city heard it, there would be a real riot. All things considered, Remy didn't feel that Julius getting torn apart by public mob was altogether a bad thing.

"Big things're comin' fast," the man said. "We ain't sittin' by while they get up their crews and come together all organized."

"We," the woman said, "want you an' yer people with us, an' in on alla what's goin' down."

Remy heard Julius grunt skeptically. "What d'ya got fer me, den?"

"We have friends in high places, Mr. Boudreaux," the man said with a smile in his voice. "With us, there ain't a man who can touch you."

Julius was unimpressed. Remy listened to the seconds of silence before his reply.

"Ain't no man alive kin touch me now. Ah don' need yer fancy connections as ah've got mah own!" Remy heard him stand, pushing his chair away with a loud clatter. "Ah'm the biggest damn dog in Louisiana!"

Remy flinched at his volume and took the earpiece out briefly before listening in again.

"If all y'all want anythin' round mah city, y'all gotta go t'rough me," Julius was now demanding. "Anythin' gets done, its cuz ah say so, an' nothin' goes down wit'out mah say so or ah'll get mah"-

Suddenly a gunshot rang out, the bullet striking less than a foot from where Remy hunched. With his thief's reflexes, Remy took flight.

He took the fastest escape route he'd planned, vaulting the small ledge onto the fire escape. He heard men yelling and shouts of alarm strike up and get louder.

Remy knew he'd been spotted, but he couldn't waste time or thought on that. Another shot, from the ground this time, made him duck as it hit over his head.

When he ducked, his weight shifted and a rusted panel on the fire escape gave out.

His leg went through the hole, then his weight broke two more panels and he fell down the side of the building, grabbing for anything to slow or stop his fall.

After slamming into many of the rusted metal bars, Remy hit the ground hard, though he took most of the force in a roll, gaining a good start to his desperate run. The guards had multiplied and many were close on him, giving him no time to recover or hide.

If their vulgar yells weren't enough to deafen him, he felt the pounding of their feet as they closed in. Remy's lungs burned and he quickly pulled out his short staff. It was retracted and he swiftly spun around to face the mob. In a split second, he planted his feet and extended his staff to full length, charging it till it glowed. He wasn't about to go down a like a running rat.

The first few men had the wind knocked out of them, and one from the back of the pack went flying and landed several feet away. The crew of eight was stunned by the blows and confusion, but Remy didn't hesitate to swing his staff and crack it across several heads as they rebounded toward him in fury. With skillful blows he flung weapons from their hands and dealt whirlwind attacks with his long rod.

Remy was wounded and winded. He only kept up long enough to make the men good and dazed. He saw an escape and threw a charged playing card in the short space between him and them before slipping into a dark alley. The card exploded and the leader roared at the men until they pounded off in pursuit, passing right by Remy's narrow hiding place.

Remy's heart pounded and he held his side weakly, watching them go. "Damn fools," he muttered, pleased with his escape. "All da same… dere ain't no reason for pushin' mah luck now." He went to a manhole cover and slipped into the New Orleans underground for a more leisurely stroll to where he could reach the apartment in peace.

When he came up and headed to the apartment, he was frustrated. It was a fractured rib, he was sure. There was a large, shallow scrape on one hand, and a road burn along his back. It would be hellishly sore and red in the morning.

He had the audio file for the Professor, but he had hoped to get at least a picture of the stranger. He never wanted to disappoint Charles. Never. Whatever he got never felt like enough.

"Hey, Boy."

Remy looked up as he reached the top stair. He blinked in surprise, but smiled. "Daddy! What you doin' here?"

Jean Luc LeBeau, Remy's adoptive father, put out his cigarette and gave Remy a small grin, meeting him halfway. "Hey boy, what you bin doin'? Busy?" He saw Remy's odd limp and frowned at the way he was holding his arm. "Y'alright, boy?"

Remy shrugged and shook his head. "Ain't nothin' serious. Nevah you min'." He quickly changed the subject. "Ah ain't seen y'down dis way fer weeks yet, daddy. Ah t'ought ya was holed up for a time longah?"

Jean Luc shook his head. "World bin shiftin' Remy. City bin shiftin'. Don' spect you had t'much listenin' doin' lately, what wit' yer work an' Bella Donna's lead on ya, but Julius bin makin' more enemies den friends."

"Oh dat so?" Remy was intrigued and watched his mentor's face curiously.

Jean Luc nodded. "Mmhm. Boudreaux bin steppin' down of late. Bin handin' the reins t'junior. Julius don' run like his papa. Ain't no brains b'hind dat boy's plans!" He shook his head, looking down for emphasis.

"What all's he doin'?" Remy asked. "Folks don' tell me no news. Dey know Julius got me workin' an' fetchin' fer Belle."

"Julius, he be actin' like dem Yankee gang men," Jean Luc said. "He t'reaten an' fight wit' good people an' make 'em pay fer him t'leave em alone! How dat right, Ah ask ya?"

"Ain't right no way," Remy agreed.

"No it ain't!" he repeated. "Now da men an' ah been goin' 'round helpin' where we all can. Been gettin' help an' many folks be lookin' fer a way out… dey be lookin' fer da N'awleans from our days, Remy," he said, his voice low and confidential.

Remy shook his head. "Ain't dat way no more…"

"But it could be, boy!" he said earnestly. "We been growin' strong an' b'fore long, ah'll have ya outta here! Outta here an' maybe yer lady from up North can come an' be with ya!"

"Y'fulla stories, daddy," Remy shook his head. "Been gettin' bettah f'years now, but ain't no way da city's gonna buck Boudreaux 'less it come to front they be hatin' all us mutant kind. With dey claws in me, dey got reason t'prove dey be friendly and toleratin' us."

Jean Luc opened his mouth to reply, but Remy's phone began to ring.

"Who dat, boy?"

"It's mah Cher!" Remy said, fumbling to pull the phone from his pocket, despite the pain it caused to his scrapes and aching ribs. "Dat's her ring!"

"Ain't it Tuesday night?" Jean Luc asked. "Ain't she got her schoolin'?"

Remy answered as fast as he could, pressing the phone to his ear. "Dat you, Cher? Hang on jus' a minute, ah'm goin' inside!"

Jean Luc grinned and held up a hand in farewell before leaving. Remy smiled gratefully at him before shutting the door behind him. The place was dark and quiet, free from any sign of Bella Donna.

He flipped on the light and hurried to sit. "Ah'm here, mah Cher. What you doin' awake?! It's a'most four in da mornin'!"

It was glorious to hear her voice, but she was tired. "Oh ah know, Cajun, but that's when y'get in from work. Ah wanted t'hear yer voice…"

"Anythin' wrong, Cher?" he asked, worried.

He heard her yawn. "Nah, ain't nothin' wrong, Ah guess. Jus' the usual."

Remy settled, relieved. He sat back and winced at his wounds, but they were the last thing on his mind. "Tell me 'bout it, Cher. Ah wanna know."

"School's been okay, but Logan's on me 'bout mah grades," she said, sleepily." Since we got pegged at the movies, kids at school bin downright cruel t'Kurt. Ah bin threatenin' right'n left an' ah got called t'detention three days this week."

"What?" Remy frowned. "Gettin' da paddle defendin' Preacher?"

She laughed lightly. "Nothin' like that, Cajun. They don't paddle up North!"

He chuckled, but it hurt his ribs. "What else Ah bin missin'? Last Ah heard, da blonde Barbie bin moved in da school."

"Oh, yeah, she's still here," Anna said sourly. "She an' Warren broke it off an' she's bin smilin' her way t'good graces 'round here. Professor says she's here t'stay."

"Damn," Remy shook his head. "Sorry, Cher."

"She jus' fake," she said. "Ah don' do fake."

Remy smiled. "Ah know, Cher."

She yawned and he could hear it was a wide one. "Hey, Cajun, ah gotta sleep, ah'm sorry. Kurt's gonna git on my case if he hears me on the phone."

"Den get t'bed!" Remy insisted. "Don' you git in trouble on mah account, y'hear?"

She giggled and it warmed his heart. "Ah won't, ah jus' don't like hangin' up. You go t'bed, mah Cajun." Her voice lowered a little with affection and it made his heart beat faster. "You work too hard, darlin'…"

He smiled warmly, pleased, and pictured how she might be in her room although he'd never been there. "Don' ya tease me, Cher," he chuckled. "Ah'll call when ah can t'morrow, ok?"

"Not b'fore five tomorrow night," she said, still with a purr in her voice. She knew what it did to him. "Ah got detention, r'member? Til tomorrow!" She kissed the receiver.

"Ah love you, Cher," he said, smiling.

She giggled. "Right back atcha, Cajun!" After that, she hung up.

He slowly put his phone away, smiling to himself at how the world seemed to float after he heard from Anna. He almost never remembered what he said to her, only that it made her giggle and talk to him in that gorgeous, special voice. He wished he could be where she was and touch her hair, even hold her gloved hand…

The door rattled as it was unlocked and he was jolted from his imagination as Bella Donna let herself in.

"Why you gotta lock it, Remy?" she snapped. "Ya gotta know ah was comin' t'see ya."

"Ah don' wanna get shot up in 'ere," Remy snipped back. "An' it won' hurt y'none t'knock, y'know!"

She dropped her bag by the door, slumping her strapless shoulders petulantly. "Don' you yell at me, Remy! Ah don' like it! Ya always come in wit'out knockin', an' ah pay fer this place since ah jus' love y'so much…"

Remy glowered and stuck his personal phone out of sight.

"What's dat y'got, Remy, bebé?" She hurried around and stopped when she saw him from the front. "Gawd, what happen' t'you?"

"Ah'm fine, y'hear?" Remy said pushing away her hand when she reached to touch his scratches. "Ah'll git cleaned up an ah'll be right in no time" –

Bella Donna climbed next to him on the couch. "Oh bebé, y'gotta let me take care'a dem cuts! Don' you worry," she purred, pushing his hair out of the way with one hand while her other slid down to his inner thigh.

"Hey!" He said, jumping to his feet with a wince. "Ah ain't playin' dat game wit' ya now, Belle, hear me?"

Her impatience showed in her frustrated pout. "What got int' you, bebé? Ah jus wanna kiss it bettah." She smiled and stuck out her 16 year old chest, giving him a wink.

Remy's temper flared. "T'ain't 'nough y'slip somethin' int'mah drink t'git what y'want! Ah git torn up, shot at, an' ripped off by yer devil of a brother! Ah don' like bein' paraded 'round so folks can be thinkin' him an 'yer kin be lovin' us mutants! Ah don' want no part'a dat lie!"

Bella Donna's face went livid, her eyes dark and furious. "How dare you?!" she hissed. "How dare y'lie?! You know what all would happen wit'out me!"

"Like what now, Belle?" he demanded.

"Ah won't play dis game, Remy," she snapped, standing to face him furiously. "You want out, you go 'head an' run up t'dat tramp you bin hidin' up north! Let yer daddy down 'ere hold up fer hisself an' you go up dere wit' no place, no food, no bourbon, no job, an' no girl t'take any time y'want!" She softened and slid on a seductive smile, stepping up close to him. "Don' ah give y'everythin', bebé?" He shuddered as she ran her hands over his hips. "Life be good here wit' me, y'know… not a worry, work, good bourbon, an' love…"

When she pressed her hips to his, he gritted his teeth and grabbed her arm, flinging her away and to the rug. "Ah had enough'a dis!" he shouted, furious and fed up. He met her eyes with his burning red ones and the words dripped from his lips like venom. "You could nevah have me killed!"

Her eyes got wide, looking up at him in shock.

"Ain't no way you could put me on ya' bruddah's hit list fer sayin' dis', an' by God ah'm sayin' it! Ah don' love you!" he roared, venting words he'd never been furious enough to say before. "Ah hate it here an' ah love mah girl who'd nevah treat me how you do! Ah ain't no toy, damn it, ah'm bettah den all ya' shit!"

His heart pounded hard and he was shocked at how much he said, but he didn't waver at all. Every word was true and he was so fed up. He knew she was bluffing.

He wasn't, however, quick or composed enough for Bella Donna's next move.

In a flash of steel, she yanked a knife from her boot and struck it into the side of his leg all the way up the 4 inch blade.

Pain seared up and through his leg and he fell, clutching his thigh as it throbbed and grew hot with blood. His vision blurred a bit with the pain, but Bella Donna now stood over him, shouting, her eyes streaming furious tears. "Ah could kill ya mahself! Ah could do it an' not evah lose a wink'a sleep, Remy LeBeau! So y'bettah get yer drunkass mind right, or ah might jus' dump you back where ah found ya! T'ink on dat!"

She whirled to the front door and left, slamming it so hard behind her that a picture fell off the wall nearby.

Remy hissed at the powerful pain, but dragged himself to the kitchen, using the well-stocked first aid kit. The knife had caught only flesh, and he knew Belle could have opened up a vein if she really wanted him dead. She had a few hits on her record and she preferred her knives.

Remy, his leg bandaged, swigged heavily from his bottle of bourbon to cut the pain before he dragged himself to the bedroom and collapsed on the unmade bed.

Breathing hard from the effort and the dull, aching pain through his body, Remy let his mind go blank in the dark until he fell deep asleep and began to dream.

Like an angel of light, he saw a young, beautiful girl appear and come toward him where he lay on some soft place. She was curvy, well-covered with long white gloves and had a white streak of hair from her forehead among her soft brown hair.

Remy's heart filled with pleasure and she didn't have to say anything. His Anna. His Mississippi queen, his Yankee princess.

She came over and sat next to him. "You got yerself cut up, Cajun. Didn' ah tell ya to keep outta trouble?" She tended to his leg as he dreamed, then laid down next to him, allowing him to hold her hand and play with her fingers. He knew they were talking, but it hardly mattered in his sleepy bliss what it was they talked about. She was smiling, he was happy, and she was close.

Each time he reached out to touch her or get closer, she'd laugh and slide away. She shook her head at him, but it was all the more charming.

There were real dangers to touching even her cheek, but Remy wanted to use up all the dream-help he had and he grabbed her around the waist to kiss her.

Suddenly she wasn't next to him, but was running away, laughing. So he chased after, but couldn't catch up. Remy called after her and she paused, turning to smile at him with her arms open to him.

Remy jolted awake when his dream flashed everything away in a bright light and a crash. "Huh?!" He sat up and swore at the pain in his leg. He heard shouting next door and grunted, unhappy the neighbors broke something else and disturbed his Anna dream.

He looked at the clock and groaned again. "'Leven? Ain't no respectin' thief be awake at 'leven." His leg throbbed and he saw it was bleeding again. "Damn. Hope cousin Louis' be open dis early… best git him t'stitch it."

With great care he got up and to where his friend could patch up his leg and the wounds from earlier that night.

Not long after he was pieced back together, he stood out on the street and headed off hoping for a poker game he might join. All things considered, he hoped a good game would get his mind off what Bella Donna may do, and off of the ache his dream left him with.

Everything felt uneasy. He couldn't put his finger on it, but the day had something hanging over it. He had the feeling he did when he was being watched, or when he was watching someone else. It was the feeling of just before a strike.

He did find a game going on, and although it was small change to the high stakes games he dealt for Boudreaux. It was with friends of Jean Luc's, and in a comfortable bar at the center of the local gossip chain.

"Ya ain't bin 'round much, Remy," old Dano said, smoking as usual on the pipe that was older than the bar itself.

"Jus' bin hard worked," Remy replied, letting the familiar feel of the card deck run through his fingers.

Ray, Jean Luc's brother-in-law, took his hand of cards for the round. "Bella Donna bin hell 'round here las' night an' all dis mornin'. You give 'er hell, Remy?"

He watched Remy carefully, as did the whole table.

He paused in his shuffling, considering what to say. Every one of them knew she as good as had chains on him over the family rivalry. Remy, though, just shook his head. "Jus' a lil spat. Ain't nothin' big."

The men leaned back in their chairs, disappointed and unsatisfied.

"Y'gotta give dat girl a whippin'!" old Dano snorted, and a couple of the other older men at the bar murmured in agreement. "She goin' 'round sleepin' evah-where from da bayou t'here inna Qua'tah! Paradin' roun', loose as'a day she was born! No shame in dat'un…"

"Don' bring down on Remy none, Dano," Ray cut in. "He ain't gotta choice."

"Yeah he do!" he insisted and the older men chimed in.

"Remy got 'is manhood, don' he?"

"His daddy didn' raise him up no fool."

"Boy gotta draw da line onna woman like dat!"

As the discussion went on, Remy's attention went to the TV that was on behind the bar. They were all good men he loved and respected. He was raised under the cloud of their cigars and their well-worn advice. They were also the ones who taught him how to win every hand, coached him in his first card tricks, and the first to give him a whip with their belt when he picked their pockets.

Now, though, he knew they couldn't tell him what to do. He was in hell, stuck in a dead end road, while he knew and ached for somewhere that had hope. It just felt like that was a dream he had over and over it was always going to be just out of reach.

The ball game that was on the TV over the bar was interrupted by a breaking news bulletin and a few people looked up. Remy just kept watching.

The female anchor looked a bit panicked, but fought to hold her composure. Remy was never fooled by a poker face.

"Sorry to interrupt the game, folks, but we've received reports of a possible terrorist attack on several high schools in the New York area."

Remy's focus was completely on the screen now, and at the word 'terrorist' the entire bar went silent and tense.

"We have a feed from Baywood High School in the Westchester area, one of those hit most severely" –

Remy's heart stopped. Anna's school. Anna's school was attacked!

"Remy?" Ray said his voice far away. "Remy, what're y'standin' for? What"-

"Shuddup fer a minute!" Remy waved his hand angrily for silence, riveted on the screen. It showed a sky full of smoke, caution tape, and the lights of emergency vehicles.

A male anchor stood just in front of the tape. –"the blast took out the northern section of a hall full of students on their way to their lunch hour. Students are still being accounted for and there are several injured. We have not received word of any fatalities as of yet, though several hundred yards of the wall caved in from the blast. We have heard this is a mutant-related incident, directed toward known mutants who attend"-

Students were being herded to a clear place, going behind the news anchor and a face unspeakably dear to Remy crossed with them. He panicked inside. There was Anna! She was soot-covered with a scrape on her cheek as she fought the flow of students and paramedics. Her voice carried over the others, yelling for her brother.

"Anna!" he said, eyes wide and feeling so useless he could die.

The anchor, after the crowd passed, received a prompt from behind the camera. "Really?" He turned and suddenly pointed. "There! Over there!"

The camera shifted, focused, and refocused on the hole in the school where two paramedics lifted out a limp form. It was a mutant, clearly blue even through the dust and the dirt. Remy's heart stopped when he saw a spade tail drooping to the ground.

The news shifted immediately back to the Louisiana anchor. "We have news a school here in New Orleans has also been attacked! Here's"-

Remy didn't listen. He grabbed his coat and shoved his winnings in his pocket in one fistful.

"Where you goin', Remy?" Dano demanded, surprised.

"Ah'm goin' North!" he snapped.

Ray caught his arm and held it.

"Don' you stop me," Remy growled, but he paused when he saw sympathy in Ray's eyes.

"Ah'll git you a plane, son," he said, gripping his arm. "All hell's gonna break loose, ah feel it. Now's when ya gotta git out if ya gonna make it alive."

"What about daddy?" Remy said, looking for help to protect the one person he was responsible for.

Ray frowned. "Don' you worry 'bout Jean Luc, son. He's d'LeBeau what will always git his way! Y'want da plane or no?"

"Ah'll take it!" Remy heard himself say, though the whole world felt like it was collapsing on top of him.

The next few minutes were a blur that felt like hours. He heard people as he went out through the city. They were yelling, moving, shouting about attacks on schools and on mutant businesses all over the country.

Remy went to the bank and took out all his money. The teller, a friend of the LeBeau name, simply wished him luck and Godspeed on his way.

" _Way to where?"_ he thought as he went from the bank straight to the address of a man with his private plane. He didn't know New York. He didn't know there would be a place for his kind of person up there.

The biggest city he'd ever been in was Baton Rouge, and New York had the biggest, richest cities in the world!

Nervous, but terribly worried for Anna and Kurt, he thought hard. _"Professah, you up dere?"_ He hitched a ride with a truck headed out of the city toward the friend's place. After a few minutes there was still no response from the Professor.

Remy's mind spun on the devastation of young mutants being talked about on every radio station and the danger Anna and Kurt were in. There were reports of bombs, shootings, riots. In every state there was at least one young mutant fatality and the country was in an uproar.

In the middle of it all, he was surprised he was so… calm. He knew he was leaving the only home he ever knew. He knew if he left, he could be killed for ever coming back.

He also knew he was leaving the man who raised him from a six year old orphan to a man.

He called Jean Luc several times as he made his way to the ranch and the grass airstrip. There was no answer and after leaving his third message Remy shoved his phone in his pocket and hopped out of the truck bed, thanking the man who gave him a lift.

"Harrison's out back, boy," he told Remy. "He knowed you was comin'."

Remy clasped his hand briefly. "Thanks… Ah mean it."

He nodded. "Safe travels."

As he drove away, Remy shouldered his bag and jogged around back, hearing the two-seat plane's engine revving. How could he explain to Jean Luc if he never even got to –?

"Hey! Remy!"

He stopped and stared. Jean Luc was there and apparently had been waiting for him. He ran over and embraced Remy suddenly.

Remy didn't respond right away to the hug, guilty. "Ah have t'do it, daddy, ah have to!"

"Shuddup, Remy, an' don' worry 'bout it," Jean Luc said, letting him go. He looked sorrowful, but there was a small proud smile on his lips. "The fam'ly can take dis fight from 'ere."

The expression made Remy feel guiltier. "Daddy, ah" –

"No, Remy, dis all bin goin' on too long," Jean Luc shook his head. "Don' ya be like that. Ah knowed y'could do more with ya' life if y'weren't caged up fer the Boudreaux's."

Remy was speechless and his heart ached looking at this father, thief, and very proud man admit he was wrong.

Jean Luc seemed to see that and drew himself up taller with a firm look. "Now you promise me, hear? Git good schoolin'! Love ya' woman right! An' make me proud as hell of ya! Mind me, boy?"

Remy clasped his hand and pulled him close. "Ah mind, daddy. Ah promise, Ah'll do it."

Jean Luc held him until the plane's engine revved impatiently. He let Remy go and shoved him toward the plane with a playful kick to Remy's pants. "Quit draggin', Boy, an' git!"

Remy heard his chuckle and waved as he ran and jumped in the passenger seat, swallowing tears with determination.

"Buckle in, son, we be flyin' low," the pilot said. "Air traffic's canceled, but we're flyin' anyhow!"

Remy sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. He silently prayed for the first time in years. He prayed for Jean Luc, and now for Anna and Kurt that he'd find them alive when he arrived.


	5. United

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New student Heidi Strome sorts good friends from bad in the new, full Xavier Institute.

Heidi Strome was new. She felt more out of place by the second as she sat in the hospital ward far under the ground at Xavier’s Institute for Gifted Youngsters. The room was occupied by Kurt, the chief victim of the bomb in Bayville, NY. He was foggy and a little awake while he talked with his friends.

They seemed to her a nice enough bunch, though she’d never been around more than one other mutant, and that was her uncle LeRoy. He just had two different colors in his eyes. One of them, Remy, reminded her a little of her uncle, though Remy’s black and red eyes made a more intense effect.

It was more difficult to tell people about hers. She could hear things. She heard pretty much everything. Right now the conversation in the room was pretty mellow. Leaning her head against the wall as though she was taking a nap, she listened in through the wall and a bit down the hall to hear the Professor and her mentor, Dr. McCoy, discussing what to do next.

“We’ll get the rest of the students in by the end of the week,” Hank said, his gruff voice familiar and comforting to hear. “We’ll be up to nearly 50. At our best we could never handle that many.”

“We don’t have much choice at this point,” the Professor replied. “The mentoring program worked fine as long as there was no danger, but it’s not safe to leave powerful young mutants on their own. In a charged climate like this, any one of them could lash out and do serious harm to others and to themselves.”

“Remy, the Cajun boy, you said he has information?”

“Some,” the Professor replied. Heidi tuned in a bit more when they went into a room. They left the door open, so she could still make out what they were saying. “I’m relieved he made it up here so quickly. After you treat his leg, I’ll get him to my office for a meeting with Scott.” The Professor sighed a little, sounding frustrated. “We have a handful of new teachers to help with the flow, but T’challa returned to Wakanda for the international response to the attacks, Warren has had to distance himself and likely won’t be with us until things cool off, and Logan’s run off to collect his daughter.”

“No major missions, then,” Hank said. She’d heard him fill in answers that way, especially in her Skype lessons. He’d been a huge help in her effort to learn her powers, even though it took a little time to adjust to his sometimes brusque manner. Now she found it familiar, like her family’s voices.

“What I meant was I’m glad you’re here. We’re glad to have you, same as always. I hope you decide to stay.”

He was quiet for a minute and she worried she was missing some response. Her focus was disrupted and suddenly all she could hear were the immediate sounds in the room, the friends talking, and all at a high volume since they were so much closer. She winced and covered her ears for a second until she could readjust.

“You alright, girl?” Remy asked. He was sitting nearest. For the moment, Anna wasn’t on his lap. She was giving her brother some ice chips Bobby made.

Heidi looked up a little bashfully. “Say that again, but this time don’t yell?”

He smiled a little and whispered with a grin. “You alright?”

She grinned back. “Yeah, I’m okay. I was listening to something outside. Not outside-outside, just in the hall.”

He slid a little closer. “You hear anythin’ juicy?”

Hank arrived and let himself in. “Well, how’s the patient doing?” he asked, watching Kurt. “Ah. I see he’s still at high risk for being spoiled rotten. Anna, get down, he shouldn’t be jostled.”

She made a face, but got down. “You said we shouldn’t let him get all dehydrated.”

Hank turned to Remy. “I’d like to take a look at that leg. It looks like you’ll need that stitched.”

“It is stitched, Doc.” Remy got up and Heidi got up too, to follow.

“Then it needs stitched correctly,” he said, carefully speaking the last word. “Come along, Heidi, I’d like your help.”

Remy limped out to a procedure room a little way down the hall where Hank sat him down. “Don’t be too rough with it, Doc.”

Hank ignored him and brought Heidi over. “Here, I know you’re not squeamish. Just think of it as a cow leg and you’ll be alright. Unwrap the dressing carefully. If it pulls back, leave it where it is, but get as much off as you can.”

Heidi took comfort from his confident pat on her shoulder and got to work.

“You a country girl?” Remy asked, sitting up.

“Lay down,” Hank growled from the medicine cabinet.

Remy rolled his eyes then lay down.

Heidi smiled, carefully working the cloth and gauze off. “Yeah. Wisconsin. My family owns a dairy farm. Not anything huge, but big for our town.” She was relieved no gauze stuck to him and she moved aside when Hank came back.

He anesthetized the wound (Heidi was surprised at how little the needle was, but she was used to big vet needles) and cleaned up first around it then in it once the medicine was working. “This, my dear, is a knife wound about 48 hours old, inflicted at an angle” – he paused to imitate what he thought was the angle, looking to Remy for agreement – “and stitched up by someone left-handed. Come over here and have a look at the tissue here…”

Heidi stood a little closer and smiled when he stood her in front of him and adjusted the light so she could see effectively. He worked at an angle so she could stay close, carefully giving her names and interesting details while he worked, demonstrating proper stitching techniques, sterilization and cleaning methods, and telling Remy to shut up when he made jokes. “That’s enough out of you. You’re done.”

“Thanks, Doc,” he started to sit up, but Hank pushed him back down.

“I said you’re done, but I didn’t say you could get up. Stay until the anesthetic wears off, then I need you to keep that leg elevated. We cleaned up the wound, but we don’t need you bleeding again.”

He turned to Heidi. “It’s plenty late. Let me take you to your room?”

Heidi nodded. She promised she’d go right to sleep at lights out, though she doubted she could actually manage it.

She ended up with a cot by the door, in a room crowded with 6 girls already sleeping when she crept in. Just because the lights were out didn’t mean the girls slept.

With her back to the group, she couldn’t quite tune them out.

“So, what do you do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” another voice replied.

“You mean you can see it? It’s dark, I can’t see anything.”

Heidi turned over, but didn’t plan on chiming in. Against the dim moonlight on the other side of the large window, further dispersed by the curtains, she saw two girls sitting up, one taller than the others with an odd outline.

“That’d be a first,” she said and held up her hand.

Heidi winced at a weird throbbing and crackle that came from the tall girl, and she couldn’t help but stare when she held up her hand. The silhouette changed from a hand to a wide dark cone with ragged edges, growing before their eyes.

The other girl touched it and recoiled at first. “Whoa! What is that?”

“Bone. It grows all over. I’ve been off and on here because of the special stuff I need. Still, I’d like to get a good whack on whoever blew Baywood high to pieces!” She sighed and lowered her hand, but didn’t change it back. Heidi guessed she couldn’t. “At least it means we all get to be here now instead of scattered all over the place.” She looked up at the other girl. “What about you? What do you do?”

Another girl sat up to join them, then another took the second girl’s place when she went to bed. It went on like that for hours. Heidi lay facing the wall with her eyes open, willing them to be quiet. Even when they finally all dropped off, she heard the plumbing gurgle, the wind whistle in all the windows, and everybody turning in their beds. When someone on the top floor started to snore, she got up and gathered her blanket around her. She muted her steps carefully in case anyone else might hear her.

Hank showed her where his office was, so she headed there. The door was locked, there were no sounds from inside, but she knew there was no way to get down the elevator to where he was likely still treating the wounded.

There on the ground floor with the offices, things were quieter at least. She bundled herself up and sat against the door. If he came back, he could help.

 

“Who’s that, Ms. Kate?”

Heidi blinked awake, the sounds of the house coming back in a rush. She looked up to find a little girl staring at her, holding a teacher’s hand.

The teacher knelt down. “Are you alright?”

Heidi nodded and yawned, picking herself up, keeping her blanket wrapped close. “I’m okay. Just couldn’t sleep. What time is it?”

“Just a little past seven, but you ought to hurry if you’re going to get breakfast. That’s where we’re going.” The teacher helped her up and offered a smile, though she had to smile up. Heidi noticed she was short, and that was saying something since Heidi was only about 5’4”. “I’m Ms. Farnsworth. You can call me Ms. Kate. Were you looking for Dr. McCoy?”

Heidi nodded, walking with them. “Yes. He wasn’t here, though, so he’s probably still looking after the hurt people.”

“I was told he was here at the school, but I haven’t seen him even once. From what I hear he may be busy for quite a long time. Did you come in with anyone else?”

Heidi shook her head and caught the little girl smiling at her. She grinned back and winked to make her giggle.

Kate smiled too. “I’m sorry. Still, it’s a great time to make new friends. No boundaries are up yet, everyone is pretty new to one another, and we’re going to be together a long time.” She stopped at the door to the large ballroom, converted to a makeshift cafeteria. “Here we are!”

Heidi looked around, surprised at the amazing variety spread out at fold-away tables. She saw a few of the kids from Kurt’s hospital room at a table, some girls whose voices she recognized from her room, and there were even a couple of kids running around. One African boy even sparked as he ran past with a reddish dog.

She got a tray of food and looked around for a free space. Any would do, she thought. She’d never been to a new school, so jumping in was about the best option she had.

A table in the middle had some open space, so she went over and sat on the end. “Hello,” she said and smiled, hoping she didn’t look as nervous as she felt.

It was a mixed group and they looked her over. A couple of them had marks on them, and a few others showed some more obvious visual mutations. The boy on the other end blinked with sideways eyelids, and a girl seated opposite Heidi only had four stunted fingers on each hand and ridges up her arms. A banana-yellow-skinned boy looked her up and down.

“What are you doing here?”

Heidi felt her stomach clench and she swallowed hard. “Eating breakfast? Same as you?”

The girl with the fingers looked at her incredulously. “No, what are you doing here? Like at this school? You sure don’t look mutant.”

Heidi looked around the room and shrugged. “Not everyone does. We’re still mutants, right?”

The yellow boy made a face and shook his head. “Some more than others. Why don’t you go over there with the other pretty-pretties?” He nodded to a group a few tables away where some perfectly normal looking students were gathered around watching a boy bend a spoon with his mind.

Apparently it took a lot of concentration, Heidi thought, or his face wouldn’t be so pale. She looked back at her own table. “It doesn’t make that much of a difference,” she said, confused at how hostile they seemed. “We’re all going to be in classes together, and” –

A tall girl arrived and stood next to the yellow boy. “What’s going on?”

Heidi recognized her voice from the night before and smiled hopefully. “Hey. I’m assigned to your room. I got in late, I couldn’t introduce myself. I’m Heidi.”

She looked at her and smiled a little like the finger girl had, surprise mixed with skepticism. She extended a hand and Heidi could see it was the hand she’d changed shape. She had several bony growths on her back and on her arms and legs, and Heidi was surprised to see the growth on her hand hadn’t overtaken her fingers but had simply grown up from her forearm. “I’m Marrow, or Sarah, on the record.”

Heidi gladly took her hand and shook it. “Neat trick last night,” she said, smiling.

The others made room for Sarah to sit and Heidi felt distinctly less threatened. “Thanks. I’ve been working on growing on command. What do you do?”

Heidi pointed to her ear. “I hear things. A lot of things. I wouldn’t go as far as to say everything. That’d really make things hard.” She blushed a little. “Of course, it’s probably not very cool, at least not compared to growing bones wherever you want.”

Sarah smiled. She really had a nice face, and it was suited to her short, irregular red hair. “You’d be surprised what passes around here. There’s a girl here, Kitty, who walks through walls. Not such a big deal when you see her do it, but it all depends on who put up the wall and why it’s there. She can do a bunch of stuff with it now, even walk through the air.” Sarah looked around and pointed to a teacher. “That’s Storm,” she said with a note of admiration. “She controls the weather. That’s not too crazy, but without her, I’d probably be dead in some ditch back in Canada.”

Heidi stared. “What do you mean, dead?”

Sarah shrugged, playing cool while she ate a piece of toast. “The people here rescued me. Well, a few of them did. That was when I manifested.” She smiled at the others sitting at the table. “It’s not easy to hide, is it?”

They all agreed with varying levels of pain in their expressions.

The boy with side-blinking eyes pointed to them. “I almost drowned. When I came back up my eyes burned so bad they had the doctor wrap them for a few days. They unwrapped me and I had these. Nothing wrong with me! I see better than ever! I didn’t need glasses anymore, but nobody cared about that.”

Sarah’s expression was serious. “Home’s not the same after that. Mine went slower. These” – she pointed to her growths on her back and arms – “were just little bumps at first. They got bigger and thicker by the day. My folks were poor and the doctors didn’t know what to do except suggest surgeries they could never pay for. Everybody expected me just to wither up, like these were tumors.” She shook her head. “When I didn’t, the government came for me, to put me in some home for the weird.”

Heidi felt her gut turning at the idea of being sent away with strangers, to live with people who were really sick. “What happened?” she asked.

“The professor came one day and sorted things so I’d be with a foster family.” She smiled a little. “They weren’t bad, there were just way too many of us. Just got to say, I’m glad I’m finally here.” She stole a bit of sausage from Heidi’s plate and grinned. “So, what’s your story?”

 

After spending breakfast with Sarah and the others, Heidi spent much of the morning pitching in with chores outside. Teams were set up to help clear space for a new building for classes and student rooms. While the work was hard, it was nice to be in the fresh air, at least until she was hot, sweaty, and covered in thorns from cutting back rose bushes.

Kate came out periodically to take students inside. Heidi didn’t much care that it was for paperwork. By the time she heard her name, she was ready to clean toilets if it meant she didn’t have to be landscaping.

Kitty greeted her at the door to a classroom. “Heidi, right?” she said, smiling. “I’m supposed to tell you, Dr. McCoy wants your help doing some physicals tomorrow. Okay?”

Heidi nodded, hopeful at hearing she could do something useful with him. “Yeah, great. What are we doing now, though?”

Kitty gave her a stapled packet of papers. “Registration. There’s conventional school registration stuff here, but the biggest thing here are the medical pages and bits about mutations. Take it, have a seat, and fill it out. You can leave any time you’re done. Oh!” She pointed to a cooler by the door. “We also have some waters here.”

Heidi took one immediately. “Just what I needed! Thanks!”

Looking around, she took a seat next to Remy at a table in the back.

He was sitting back in his chair tapping the papers with the back of his pen. “Hey cowgirl!” he grinned and pulled out the chair for her. “What job they have you on?”

She showed him her arms, scratched up though nothing serious. “Roses. They’re moving the whole bed and needed some slave labor to cut them back. What about you?”

He smiled. “Stumps. Ah’m a one-man demolition team. They needed space cleared for a new generator buildin’ in the tree cover. It’s good practice.”

She glanced through her packet. “How long is this supposed to take?”

“Ah’m not sure. Depends, ah guess.” He sat up and looked at his, though she could tell he wasn’t actually reading it. “Could- Well, do y’think maybe” – he cleared his throat. “Nevahmind. Sooner we start, sooner we finish, right?”

She glanced at him, confused, before filling in the personal information box. “Right.”

After a few minutes and a few more people coming and going, she glanced over and noticed he hadn’t filled anything out.

“Something wrong?” she asked, scooting her chair over.

He cleared his throat a little. “Ah’m, uh, not too good with writin’. Ah kin read alright, a little, but writin’ ain’t easy for me.”

“Do you think I could help?” she asked.

He smiled, embarrassed. “Ah’d sure appreciate it.”

Heidi helped with the first bit, doing hers alongside his. “Alright, does the school have your grades from last year?”

Remy cleared his throat a little. “Ah- well, ah don’t do school… Ain’t done school for a long time. There an option for that?”

She nodded and checked a box. “That just says you’ll need to take an assessment later.” He made a face and she quickly tried to reassure him. “Really, it’s just a test. And there will be someone to help. How did you get away without school?”

He answered while she filled in her own answers.

“Ah jus’ stole what ah needed. Ah know, you’ve got a nice lil town where that don’t go on, but New Orleans, that’s a place where folks like us gotta find a life outta the main track. Ah’m good with numbers,” he said with a smile. “Ah can rustle up a poker game and take the pot without hardly thinkin’! An’ ah run operations for mah daddy an’ the Professor if he needs anythin’ done down there.”

Heidi glanced up to see if anyone was listening to them, but they all seemed occupied with their own conversations and papers. “Operations? You mean like missions? I thought only the teachers did those?”

Remy leaned forward. “Well, most of them. Doc runs in ‘em sometimes. Is that how you know ‘bout ‘em?”

Heidi nodded. “I don’t think I’m supposed to know. He only let it slip a little once, but- well, I’ve got a good memory.”

He settled. “Well, don’t you worry. Ain’t nothin’ goes on here that ain’t gone past the Professor. An’ usually them ops don’t get crazy. He don’t ever want fightin’ unless it’s a last option.”

Heidi considered her next question carefully, keeping her eyes on her paper. “Even when someone tries to blow us up?”

He was quiet for a minute, but leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. “Listen, ah’ve known the Professor for years. He’s like a daddy to me. He knew somethin’ was up, just not what, an’ ah know he wants to hold the right folks responsible.” He paused and shook his head. “Not in the beatin’ way, but the law way. No matter what way people want to twist things, it’s wrong to blow up kids. Ah don’t mean t’be rude about it, but that’s what this comes down to. All the Professor ever tries to do is keep bad things from happenin’ and protect people from gettin’ hurt.”

She glanced over at him. “Don’t you want to get back at them?”

“Damn right I do,” he said, and his expression made her believe he not only wanted to but could do it without hesitation. “But,” he continued, “the right way. Left to me, ah’d blow ‘em up right back. That would only make things worse, though.” He shook his head and tapped the papers. “For all the red tape, ah trust the way the Professor does things. By the book, two steps ahead, and keepin’ innocents out of it.”

He looked own at his papers and squinted at them. “So, where we at?”

Heidi smiled and pointed. “Right here. Medical issues. How about you just tell me and I’ll write them for you?”

“Glad for a good friend like you,” he said, smiling with relief before answering the first question.

 

The next day Heidi struggled to keep her eyes open. Even though it was helpful to now know Sarah and a few of the other girls in her room, the noises of the building at night were just too strange to tune out. She explained this to Hank between students getting their physicals.

He checked her over and looked in her eyes and under her tongue. “We need to watch your immunity and keep it up until you get some real rest. I don’t want you getting sick.” He leaned over and made a note on his pad. “And I’ll get you some sedatives you can take. That should make it easier.”

“I don’t need pills, I need familiar sounds. Can’t I be in a room closer to yours?”

He shook his head and gave her a fresh cover for the exam table. “Put that down. And no, I’m afraid you can’t. I’ll be on duty again tonight.”

“If we’re talking insomnia, let’s talk about you too, then,” she replied, pinning the crepe paper cover in place. “You weren’t in your office last night. I couldn’t hear you anywhere, so you had to be still working.”

He didn’t reply, but instead opened the door to the little nurse’s office. “Next!”

Heidi wasn’t finished getting on his case, but the next student in was Sarah.

“Hey stranger,” she said, smiling at Heidi.

Hank took her papers and glanced over them, adjusting his glasses. “Have a seat on the table, please.”

Heidi adjusted the light. “Sorry, Sarah. He’s not usually so rude. Well, sometimes, but not on purpose. Only when he thinks he’s super busy and can’t be bothered.”

Hank raised a bushy eyebrow at her and refocused on Sarah. “Heidi likes to poke fun at me.” Heidi grinned when he met her eye, but rather than being mad, he gave the smallest of smile and pointed at her with his pen. “You’re lucky you’re under my care or I’d pinch those arrogant little freckles off you.”

“He doesn’t mean it,” Heidi grinned.

Sarah held still while Hank examined the growths on her back. “Well, doc? What do you think?”

“I’m glad we’ve already got a general work-up for you,” he said. “Are the treatments helping keep down spontaneous growth?”

Sarah nodded. “It helps me grow on command too. I’m getting stronger, and I can almost shape them!”

He held up her hand, the one Heidi had seen her grow before. “And this? What happened here?”

The new growth was gone, but in its place was a jagged, angry red surface. “That’s what happens when the old stuff comes off.”

“Just comes off, or breaks off?” he asked, frowning. “The medicine you’re on should kill extraneous bone so it will be sloughed off naturally. It shouldn’t look like this. This looks like a playground for infection.”

Sarah shrugged. “I was sparring with somebody earlier. You know, it crumbled right off, but I did knock off a chunk of cement block with it.” She grinned. “That’d be pretty useful, right? No real broken bones, but one hell of a hit!”

Heidi had the uncomfortable feeling she wasn’t hoping to keep hitting blocks, but had other targets in mind. Hank didn’t seem to approve either.

“We have you here to keep you safe, not to test your potential as a weapon,” he said. “Heidi, would you get me the cleaning kit please? It’s the yellow tote with the gauze in it.”

(1/21/16) “I’ve always been a fast healer,” Sarah insisted while Hank cleaned and treated her hand. “It doesn’t hurt much at all.” She was quiet for a moment before asking, “When do you think the professor will do tryouts?”

He looked up just briefly over his glasses. “Tryouts? For what?”

Sarah looked at Heidi incredulously, but all she could do was shrug and look busy sorting gauze patches. “Tryouts,” she repeated, “like for the teams.”

Heidi could feel him getting irritated, from the rumble behind his voice to the terse rip of the bandage tape. “I did hear the professor talking about incorporating some sports. I know softball was popular and got a little crazy when I taught here last.”

Sarah frowned. “I mean for the X-men…”

Hank cleared his throat and made a note after he finished bandaging her arm. “We’re not recruiting, especially not now.”

“Why not now?” Sarah demanded, throwing her hands up. “People are trying to blow us up! Don’t you think we should be getting our shit together and hit ‘em back before they try again?!”

He took off his glasses and this time didn’t do a good job hiding the growl. “We are not recruiting, not because the situation is not dire, but because this is a school. This is a school for troubled kids, kids with nowhere else to go who are at a high risk of harm to themselves or to others. We are led by a brilliant man with one of the finest minds for crises I’ve ever met. We are not an army; we are a citadel.” He didn’t seem phased by her angry expression and instead just filed her paperwork with the others. “I guarantee you, we will help you use your powers in a healthy and proactive way.” He turned to the door and poked his head out. “Next!”

Sarah’s cheeks were red and she hopped off the table. She looked at Heidi and jabbed her thumb in Hank’s direction in a clear “What’s his problem?”

Heidi’s stomach was all knotted up uncomfortably and she could only shrug as sympathetically as she could until she left and the next patient came in.

Hank worked quickly through the exams, efficient but without much time to chat. Heidi couldn’t figure out what to say to help, or just to diffuse the tension. Instead, she resigned to quietly helping until he had his focus comfortably on work and didn’t grumble about little things.

That night Heidi noticed Sarah didn’t actually sleep much, and the night after that she continued to hear a shuffling of the students in the late hours of the night and early morning. One afternoon, just after lunch, she joined Sarah as she walked to class in the greenhouse.

“Where do you go at night?” she asked, after a few pleasantries. “I hear you and others leave. What’s going on?”

Sarah shrugged, but didn’t seem particularly bothered. She even smiled and walked a little taller. “Well, I wasn’t sure I could tell you, since you’re close with that stuffy old doctor. I thought you might tattle.” Before Heidi could pull together a reply, she went on. “Since he and the other teachers don’t want to let us fight back with them, I found a few people who want to do their bit too.”

“I don’t get it,” Heidi said. “What do you mean, do their bit? We’re here aren’t we? We’re not where the danger is.”

“Danger like that comes to find you, and I don’t want to be huddled up in a corner while someone else gets to kick some human butt.” She grimaced. “Just pitiful, really… normal people don’t have a clue what we’re capable of, so they pick on us because we’re different.” Sarah looked down at Heidi. “Well what makes us different can also send them running. You can come out tonight with us, if you want?”

“Me?” Heidi gripped her notebook against her chest, keeping her voice to a whisper. She realized then she’d been muting both their voices out of fear of getting caught. Mrs. Munroe was particularly intimidating when it came to discipline. “What good could I do? I’m just a living volume button…”

Sarah leaned in confidentially. “Haven’t you seen what the right frequency can do to glass? What about those big subwoofers that make metal act like putty?” She grinned. “I’ll bet you could stop an army single-handed with some real practice.”

Heidi stopped at the classroom door, it wasn’t her course anyway. “I don’t know.”

“Come if you want,” she said. “We’ve been heading out to the generator station in the woods out behind the house. Just follow those great ears of yours!”

 

That night Heidi made sure she was in the bathroom when Sarah and the others slipped out. She did put on boots, and a coat against the chill, but she didn’t make it past the back porch steps.

She watched her breath form clouds, hugging her knees. They were loud, at least loud to her. She could hear small explosions, lots of feet moving around, and each member cheering the others on. Over them she heard Sarah’s voice, and the voices of two or three others, that shouted out scenarios to play out, like “one on one”, “two on one”, or “teams of three”.

Footsteps behind her sounded like loud slams of a bat on concrete and she flinched, looking up.

Remy stood on the porch, smiling a little, his red and black eyes difficult to see in the dark. “You alright, girl?”

Heidi smiled a little, replying as she had before when he’d asked in Kurt’s recovery room. “Say that again, but this time don’t yell?”

He smiled a little and played along, whispering as he sat down next to her. “You alright?”

She considered his question and rested her chin on her knees. “No, not this time.”

“What were you listenin’ to?”

Heidi pointed off in the general direction of the woods. “A problem out there.” Even though she hadn’t tuned in close enough to hear specific voices like before, she heard a few yelps of fright and shouts of warning.

Rather than wait for him to ask what the problem was, she returned a question. “So, if you know someone is doing something they’re not supposed to do, and you know they’re doing it for reasons they think are right, what should you do?”

Remy looked at her and cocked his head. “Tell or not tell? That what you’re askin’?”

It was a bit beyond that, she thought. “No. More like,” she struggled a second for words, “do you go try to talk them out of it? Or do you tell on them to someone in charge?”

“Ah,” he looked out at the woods more intently, but she knew there was no way he could hear what was going on out there. “That’s a lil’ sticky, ain’t it?”

Heidi’s face stung against a chilly breeze and she hid her mouth and nose behind her sleeve. “Yeah…” She winced when she heard one of the leader voices shouting for someone to get up and not be a wimp.

“Guess it depends on you.” He leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at her. “A lone wolf would go out there an’ get in a scrap t’prove they’re right.”

That idea made Heidi’s stomach churn. She hated the idea of confrontation, especially when it was Sarah, who’d been so nice to her and helped her get friends. Getting threatened by a whack from her reinforced bone guards sounded even worse, especially since some of the noises showed Sarah was giving them a workout. Her opinion seemed to show on her face because Remy offered his other solution.

“Lone wolves like t’fight, girl,” he said. “If you don’t, an’ there ain’t no shame in that, then you gotta go to your leaders.” He bumped her shoulder with his. “They’re leaders for a reason, right?”

Heidi was quiet, mulling this over before she decided to bring up the real stick in the situation. “Suppose the person breaking the rules is your friend?”

Remy’s tone changed. “Is this dangerous, what they’re doin’?”

“It” – she paused, thinking – “it could be, if they’re not careful.”

“Then you go straight t’your friend the doctor,” he said. “The Professor couldn’t make it out there, but he can. Mutant powers ain’t nothin’ to play with. That’s why most of us are here.” He looked over at her. “If you don’t want your friend hurt, you tell, and you tell quick. No sense you goin’ up there just in time for somebody t’lose control.”

Heidi didn’t move right away, frozen as she heard a loud slam and strange crack between frenzied cheers and yells.

“Ah’ll go with you?” he said, his voice again sounding magnified until she tore her focus back to the porch. “For moral support?”

She got up. “Go with me for a better reason. I may need your help to get into the sub-basement.”

After checking both Hank’s office and listening in on the staff rooms, Heidi followed Remy to the elevator. “How come you have clearance?”

“Ah ran ops for the Professor, remember?” he grinned. “Ah’d be staff if ah was anywhere close t’graduating.” He did a thumb scan and winced, showing her his thumb when the doors opened. “Blood check. Gross, but y’never know with shape shifters around.”

When the doors opened again, Heidi led the way through the labyrinth of halls, recognizing Hank’s heartbeat out of the many down there. She stopped at a staff room in the medical hall. “He’s sleeping.” She moaned and hid her face in her hands. “He’s finally getting some rest and now we’re gonna wake him!”

Remy exhaled slowly and stepped behind her. “It’s important, but you go first. He won’t be scratchin’ his own cub.”

Heidi looked at him over her shoulder, worried.

“Figure of speech. Go on!”

She swallowed hard and opened the door. Hank snored along quietly, all mounded up on the small cot like a hibernating blue bear. His glasses lay on the desk alongside a mostly full bottle of sedatives she’d seen him give some of the patients.

“Uncle Hank,” she said, giving his arm a hesitant push. He didn’t move. “Uncle Hank, I need your help!” She summoned her courage and pulled on a clump of fur, but all he did was swat at the spot and roll over on top of it.

She made a face and tried to shake the cot, but he was too heavy to even budge it. “Uncle Hank!” she said, irritated. “This is important!”

Aware she needed to be careful of the people still in the recovery rooms, she called back to Remy to back away from the door. “Close it, too, I can use the help.” When he did, she buffered the room as best she could, containing the sound like she’d contained her whispered conversation with Sarah only this time on purpose.

“I’m sorry, but I need you awake,” she said and recalled the sound of her father’s shotgun during hunting season. Her memory was an impeccable record for sounds and she summoned up the right on by its body, pitch, and layers. She’d been standing near the gun when she’d heard it fired and reproduced it now as a threatening blast.

Hank leapt out of the bed, toppling the cot as he landed on all fours with his hackles up high and eyes quickly going from bleary to furious, right along with his roar.

Heidi dodged away, but as soon as he saw her he tried to regain focus. “Heidi?! Good Lord, what on earth are you trying to do?! I could have had a heart attack! I might have died! How did you even get down here?”

“I wouldn’t have woken you up if it wasn’t important!” she yelled right back. “It’s Sarah. Sarah’s got a bunch of kids together and they’re outside, now, trying to do what you told her she couldn’t.” She toned down her voice from a yell now that he was listening. “I’m afraid someone could get hurt!”

He quickly sobered. “Outside? Where?”

“By the generator building,” she said, “the new one out by the woods.”

He shrugged on his shirt. “Damn reckless, if you ask me. Who got you down here?”

“Remy,” she said. “He’s in the hall.”

“Good, I’ll need his help.” He paused before going out the door. “Heidi?” He turned and pressed his forehead to hers with a little purr. “Thank you. I’ll take care of this.”

Any doubt she may have had from before melted and she exhaled slowly. “Thanks!”

“You’ve done well. Remy and I will go out there, but you stay upstairs and wait with the Professor and Mrs. Monroe. Tell them what you know and we’ll be back.”

By the time Heidi finished filling in the details with the Professor, Hank and Remy still weren’t back. Mrs. Monroe sent her to bed and, for the first time since arriving, Heidi didn’t have any trouble falling, and staying, asleep.

  


The next morning she met up with Remy in the breakfast line. “When did you make it back?” she asked. “Things go alright?”

“Oh they weren’t happy,” Remy chuckled, “but came in quiet enough. Professor sat ‘em down and knocked ‘em down a few pegs, so no real harm done. Your Doc was a pro out there. Scared ‘em good an’ had them marchin’ home in no time.”

Heidi was relieved to hear no one was hurt, but she looked around to see where Sarah was sitting. Though Sarah wasn’t looking up when Heidi first scanned over the table, she did look up and meet her gaze with a glare that made Heidi’s appetite nearly disappear. Heidi quickly turned back to the breakfast trays, her cheeks hot and tears pricking at her eyes.

Remy bumped her elbow with his. “Hey,” he said gently, “you done right. She and those others could’ve been real bad hurt. If she don’t make you better or don’t see you was jus’ lookin’ out for her, then she’s no kinda friend you need.”

He helped her get her utensils and a couple napkins before hooking an arm around her shoulders. “C’mon, you gonna sit with us now!” He steered her to a table with his girlfriend and the other long-time students who waved and made room. It cheered her too, to see Kurt was up from intensive care and seated with them in a wheelchair.

“Thanks, I’d like that a lot!”


	6. Hated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the bombings targeting schools with known mutant students, Logan goes to Canada to bring his daughter safely back to XI.

The streets of Brighton in Quebec were already dark. The last city bus pulled out of the stop before she was close enough to read the sign on the back. Laura stopped where she was when she knew she wouldn’t make it and leaned on a light pole to catch her breath.

She had to make it back by seven. Her mom had a date, and all she needed was to make sure mom got off alright, then she could be ready at 8 when Hugh would be over.

Hugh and his boys noticed her. Not only did one of them notice her, Hugh did. Tall and lanky, he made her forget everything they’d talked about before he pinned her to the wall and kissed her.

Her skin tingled as she thought about it, and it gave her a little spring to her vault over the brick wall into her neighbor’s yard. Their dog was out and barked at her, but she growled back and it scurried inside its kennel.

In a moment she as through the gate, on her street, heading across the way, and –

A truck sat outside her mother’s house, but it couldn’t be her date. Debra only went in for the stiff, starched suit-wearing types, the ones with cash to burn and maybe a starter wife already at home. None of them would be driving something so… crunchy.

She couldn’t be sure, though. She walked up past it, growing still more uneasy when the smell of cigar smoke wafted out of the cab. Still, she couldn’t be sure.

Something scraped on the sidewalk behind her and she froze. She whipped around only to see no one, and nothing, on the street but her.

She stood there for a moment, her hair standing up on her arms, but when nothing happened or moved or scraped again, she let herself inside the house. She made it all the way in the kitchen before she found her mother… and worse, her father.

Logan looked her over with a glance and seemed to settle a bit. “Hey kid.”

The sight of him always made her tense, and she wrinkled her nose. “What do you want?”

Debra shoved a bag into her hands. “Here. I packed everything I could find that was clean. There’s some snacks in there, and a couple of your school books.” She threw a glare at Logan. “You could have brought a list of classes or something.”

“The regulars don’t even have anything like that,” he retorted as cigar smoke poured out of his nose and mouth. He looked up suddenly, stiff and with his head cocked slightly to one side. Laura heard a car pass and he shook his head, grabbing her arm. “Come on, kid, it’s not safe here.”

She looked from him to her mom and pulled to get out of his grip. “What are you talking about?! Nothing happens here, it’s like the safest hole of hell!”

“Laura!” Debra hissed. “Have you even heard the news?”

“No! Someone cut off my internet!” Laura hissed back, yanking her hand free. “Since when do you do what he wants?” she asked, jerking her head at Logan. “He’s gone for a decade and suddenly you’re handing me off? That’s not what the court decided!”

Debra didn’t wilt like she usually did. Instead she looked angry and hurt and maybe a bit explosive. “The court can’t promise someone won’t blow you up! He” – she glared at Logan, her expression unchanging – “he at least can.”

Laura wanted to be sure Debra knew she wasn’t that ignorant. “Canadians don’t blow people up, mom. That was all the US! And he lives down there!”

Logan growled. “We’re trying to protect you. We agree on this, and if we agree on something, then your safe little hell has frozen over. Come on, kid, we’ve got to go. Now.”

Once in the truck, the steel frame groaned under their combined weight. His came from artificial metal on his bones. Hers came from organic. Just her stupid luck her gene decided to make an already gross power even worse. She weighed nearly 300 pounds at barely 5 ft tall and looked less than half that. At least she could keep up with everyone her own age without having to lift weights or be in sports.

“So we are going to the US?” she asked, aware of the answer. “Why? They’re the ones trying to blow us up.”

“There were other attacks,” he said, driving over the speed limit, but not enough to get pulled over. “The news doesn’t cover everything. Neither does your high school gossip.”

“This is kidnapping, y’know,” she pressed, keeping an eye on the clock. She could still hitch a ride back in time to meet Hugh if she wore him down enough to let her out. Or if she bolted. “Mom could change her mind if I called her. This wouldn’t be legal.”

He threw her a look and she stared back, but then buckled her seatbelt. He looked back at the road. “We’ve worked it out. I’ve got friends taking care of it.”

She scoffed, half wondering why he bothered about the belt when they were both heavy enough to snap it… and would likely survive any accident. “You’ve got friends?”

“The place I work,” he said, emphasizing that he did, in fact, have a job, “is the safest place in the world for us. We’re lucky to have somewhere to go. No one can touch you there.”

She threw her head back. “Great. A convent too.”

She saw him smirk out of the corner of her eye and she regretted making a joke. She didn’t want to make friends. “I’ll break out. Anywhere I don’t want to be, I get out.”

He exhaled smoke from the cigar. “Not from here, you won’t.”

Laura frowned, irritated he wasn’t shaken. “It’s that classy joint, right? Lot of breakables in there… sure you can afford locking me in…?” She rubbed her knuckles where the blades were hidden.

“I’m running a tab for stuff like that,” he said, coolly. He merged the truck onto the highway and was quickly in the fast lane. “You’ll have one too. Kitchen always needs volunteers to scrub.”

She stared at him, and at the street lights blurring past. They were eating up distance and she felt her gut tighten up thinking she’d now have to wait until they pulled off to get a ride back to meet Hugh. She sat back in her chair, her mind racing through a few minutes of quiet.

“I have to pee.”

He grunted and made no move to change lanes. Another exit flashed into their rearview mirror.

“I’m serious,” she said. “You didn’t exactly let me go before we left.”

“Didn’t have dinner, did you?” he asked, more to himself than to her. He made it to the next exit, taking a couple of lanes at a time. He pulled in at a Denny’s just off the highway and parked.

Laura went in first and barely glanced at the lanky teen behind the counter on her way toward the restroom sign.

“Two,” she heard her father say before she turned the corner and ducked into the bathroom.

Laura took out her phone and checked the time. She still had half an hour to get back. Debra likely canceled her date – she would never want one of her new guys to even catch a whiff of her ex – but Laura figured she could cut Hugh off on his way to her house and find somewhere else to go.

She looked up and scowled at the lack of accessible windows. In the movies people could always get out windows in the bathroom. That was irresponsible of them. What if there were girls on bad dates? What were they supposed to do?

Laura remembered seeing a side exit and snuck out to look while still being shielded from the rest of the restaurant. She had a straight enough shot to it.

Gathering up her best look of confident indifference, she strode across the side dining room and let herself outside, the chill setting her face all prickly. Next up she needed a ride and she scanned the parking lot for –

“So you’re not hungry?”

The hair stood up on her neck and she stood very still.

Logan, waiting by the side door with his cloud of cigar smoke, clamped a hand on the back of her arm and walked her down the ramp toward the truck. “What do you want to go back for, huh?” he asked, his tone far from angry. It made her furious to hear he sounded amused. “Thought that was hell?”

She yanked her arm back halfway across the lot and rubbed her arm, even though his grip hadn’t hurt her. “Maybe I just don’t want to go anywhere with you. Thought about that?”

“Just because I won’t let you get your way,” he said, “doesn’t mean I don’t like you.” He was just starting to say something else when she saw his face change. He froze and looked up, slightly over her shoulder. When she turned to see what he was looking at, he held her shoulder so she couldn’t turn and gave her a push toward the truck. “Get in, the sooner we get going the sooner we get there. You can sleep most of the way.”

He stepped away from her to get to the driver’s side door.

The moment he lost sight of her, Laura bolted for the road. Her father was a lot of things, but fast had never been one of them. She wasn’t a sprinter either, but she was younger and could stand the burn in her lungs.

She was nearly to the road when she looked back to see if he’d started to follow her.

Something hit her. Something very large, very solid, and very hot.

Everything went into bright light and dark shadow with a deafening horn blast. Then suddenly she blinked. She blinked very long and when she opened her eyes her heart was pounding fiercely in her ears and she was kneeling on the ground… with her claws buried in the grill of a new model truck.

Fluid hissed and sputtered out onto the pavement, helped along by the holes she made and the large dent from the impact.

Everything was muted in her ears and she stared at her arm as ugly red and purple bruises blossomed briefly then disappeared again to healthy skin. By the time they’d cleared, she could hear shouting.

Laura pulled her claws out of the car and withdrew them, listening to her father and the driver of the truck.

“You hit her! You should have been more careful! It’s you who’d better have some insurance here, bub!”

“Me?! What the hell is this? She’s ruined my truck! She’s a mutey, and one that outta be locked up somewhere she can’t go ripping into private property just cuz she wants to!” The driver raised his voice to some onlookers Laura could barely hear. “Somebody call the police and get them to decide!”

“What’d you call her, bub?” Logan growled. Laura felt her skin prickle with fear and she looked up cautiously at her stout, short father getting up in the angry driver’s face.

Laura glanced at the twisted metal that used to be the bumper and got a sickening twist to her gut. Several weathered stickers that read things like “proud homosapien”, “pure human forever”, “x on the x gene”. The plate was Canadian, and the part of her brain still disconnected from the impact thought the stickers were not very neighborly of him.

While she’d been reading the stickers, something must have happened. Her ears were still ringing loud enough she likely wouldn’t have heard more shouting or the sound of her father’s claws if he used them.

Logan hooked an arm around her and walked her quickly to the truck. “Get in,” he muttered, practically shoving her into her seat. He got in and floored it.

Laura hadn’t done up her seatbelt so she fell hard against the door with the force of his turn back onto the highway. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the parking lot and a group of people surrounding the unconscious driver on the ground.

“Did you hit him?” she asked, yanking the belt on.

“Yup.” He glanced at her just briefly so he could keep up his rapid pace on the road. “You alright, kid?”

She nodded and leaned her chair back a notch or two. “Shook up.”

The sigh he gave sounded more like a snort. “Serves you right. Go to sleep and let the heal factor do the rest. We’ll be going to” –

Laura didn’t hear. She didn’t move again until the truck stopped and Logan shook her awake to walk nearly a mile down a dirt road in pitch darkness.

She felt much better physically, but everything felt new and not in a good way. She glanced at her phone and caught a glimpse of the clock before Logan shoved her phone back in her bag. It was just a few minutes past two in the morning.

“Any light out here just says come and get me,” he said in a voice not quite a whisper, but not normal speech either.

Laura looked up at the sky and the moon, shivering now the temperature had dropped hard. She didn’t pull out her coat though. The cold helped her remember this was really happening.

“Are we going to be arrested?” she asked. “Since we ran?”

“Yup. And we can’t afford that. Can’t afford getting caught by anything following us. We’re on a schedule. Why’d you go running off like that?”

Laura didn’t see the point in lying now. “I had a date,” she said, hoping to make him squirm a little. “Thought I could still make it back.”

He just grunted unhappily.

She heard an animal rustle around in the leaves alongside the road and listened until they passed by it. “I never ran into a mutant hater before,” she said, quiet.

“They get a lot nastier,” he replied in that same low voice. “On weekends he probably goes out with his buddies, watches the hockey game, gets drunk, and then beats up the one mutant they know in town until the family has to leave. Same group probably raises money for a ‘cure’ and acts all high and mighty about saving people who don’t need a bit of their charity.”

“Is that what they want? To ‘cure’ us?”

Logan stopped at a fork in the road and took her down to the left. “Can’t generalize,” he said simply. “Some want weapons, others want a cure, a few want us just to get the hell out of wherever we are. We’re just different, that’s all.”

After a few minutes, he slowed his pace and held her arm so she slowed too.

“You and me, we’ve got a bit of the beast,” he said, and when she looked at his face he looked a little cautious about what he had to say. “We don’t show it on the outside, much as your mom gets mad about how I wear my whiskers, but inside we… A big chunk of mutations bring back animal things that people cut out.”

Laura didn’t like the uncertainty in his face. “I’m not going to go chasing Frisbees in the park any time soon, am I?”

He settled some and grinned. It was then she noticed he’d gotten rid of his cigar and hadn’t lit a new one. “Not unless you’re into that kind of thing. I can’t judge.”

He brought her off the road, then, winding through the trees. In a few steps, she saw a light. It wasn’t piercing, like the LED flashlight her mom demanded Laura have on her house key. A woman met them, carrying what looked like some military surplus flashlight, and she kept the beam up near Laura’s face.

Laura couldn’t see much of anything while the woman talked in low whispers with Logan.

All she heard was her father say “she’s my kid” and the light dropped. Laura saw spots and blinked rapidly, tripping over things while trying to follow them through the now pitch-black woods.

He caught her arm as she tripped again. “Easy.” He held her arm so she was close enough to hear him explain. “Mubarak lives here, with his family. He’s from Egypt. He’s not here, but this is his wife Amisi. Second wife.”

Laura didn’t think she needed to know that, and did wonder a little why her dad would care about domestic stuff, but he clammed up when they arrived at a close complex of trailers in a clearing. Looming outside the limited glow of light from the windows were large trucks, minus their trailers, facing out into the dark behind.

Amisi took them to one of the trailers and opened the door for them. “Quickly, then. Come on.”

Logan pushed Laura ahead first and she needed his hand on her back to stop her staring at Amisi’s face.

She was a beast visual. Her eyes had a rounder shape and dark brown fur grew up over the bridge of her nose in select patches around her face, and the hand that held the light.

Laura sat down on the nearest place she could, a low bench near the door, while her father pushed past to talk to a 30-something man who came out from further inside.

Amisi came to look at her and their curiosity was mutual. “You look like your father,” she said, smiling with teeth that struck Laura as more like a dogs’. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here. And we will help. What happened?”

“I wrecked a guy’s truck,” she said, suddenly realizing how cold she was. The warmth inside was making her finger tips turn red and painful.

Amisi saw Laura’s hands and made a low sympathetic sound deep in her throat. “Oh, you’re cold! How long did you walk?” She took Laura’s hands and warmed them in her palms.

Before she could say more, the man from the back of the trailer came up. Looking up, Laura noticed he was normal in the face. No fur or odd eyes. “Momma,” he said, “they’ll be helping with a run tomorrow. Can you take care she gets changed enough?”

Amisi helped Laura to her feet and smiled. “Do you like short hair? Maybe black? Or a bit of color?” She wrapped Laura up in a blanket from the bench and helped her back outside to another trailer.

Two hours later, Amisi held up a mirror. Laura pushed a bit of her now black hair away from her face. “Wow.”

“Do you like it?” Amisi moved the mirror so the back of Laura’s head was visible in the tiny bathroom mirror. “The highlights are not too bright?”

She couldn’t help but keep touching it. Her hair had never been so soft, or so dark. “No, not too bright. Doesn’t look like coal, so that’s good.”

“You can wear something of Ati’s, if you need it,” she said. “That’s my girl. She is your size, I think. Maybe taller by some. Her father is tall.” She ran her fingers through Laura’s hair, though now it was nearly dry.

The touch was soothing. Despite the smell of the hair dye, the warm musty smell of the trailer was soothing too. Amisi smelled good, even though Laura couldn’t call it perfume, and she realized she was leaning into Amisi’s touch a little.

“Do you feel safe here?” Laura asked.

Amisi sat back, thinking. “Yes. The country is good to us. We’re far enough away not to feel the damages this week…” her expression darkened in the mirror. “All those innocent children… We left because of bombs in our homeland and now people set them off on children. Here. Here where we came to be safe.”

“Are you going to leave?” Laura caught herself realizing she probably shouldn’t ask something like that. “I mean, Dad’s taking me away…”

Thankfully she didn’t seem offended. “No, not now. But if we have to, I’ve heard of a place. Only for an emergency, but…” She reached over to a rack of tattered magazines, all over four years old, and pulled out a pristine pamphlet. She gave it to Laura to look at. “They say they’re going to be a country for us. For people with the gene. The ones who can’t hide, especially.”

Laura read the name and glanced through the pictures. “Genosha, huh?” The pictures were the first she’d ever seen of visual mutants smiling. Most of them looked not only happy, but more beautiful than normal human movie stars.

“I don’t know if they would take the family,” she said quietly, pain in her voice, “but if something happened, I could take Ati there with me. Then we would come back when it gets safe again.”

Someone knocked on the door and Amisi peeked out before opening it. She looked up at Laura. “Come, dear, it’s time to go. Get your bag.”

Her father was outside and she stopped short in surprise at the change to him. Logan was clean shaven, his hair combed (with what looked like some difficulty), and he wore a loose t-shirt and a brown sweatshirt rather than his leather jacket. Laura saw he carried an old backpack now and guessed his jacket was in there.

He looked her over too. “Nice hair. You didn’t change?”

Laura looked down at her clothes. “Oh! Right. Hang on.”

When she came back out, this time in her favorite jeans plus a tight tee and tattered hoodie from the bottom of Amisi’s pile of clothes from her daughter’s room, the trucks were rumbling to life and Logan waved her over to one.

“So we’re truckers now?” she asked, scaling her way up to the passenger seat. There was a kind of cot behind the seats with a little storage and a case of water bottles within reach.

He was up in the drivers’ seat with a couple quick steps up. “Just to the border. We’re getting and giving a favor at the same time. Hop in back if you’re tired, it’ll be a few hours.”

Laura checked the time. Almost 5am. The sun, that time of year, wouldn’t be up for quite a while. Rather than buckle, she climbed in the back and found the cot – and the motion of the truck once it hit the road – surprisingly comfortable.

When she woke up, they were still driving. The radio was turned low, playing on a country station.

“You up, kid?”

She stretched, for once thankful she was so short. The cab was cramped even for her, so she wondered how the taller drivers could get comfortable in there. “Mostly,” she yawned.

She spotted a copy of the pamphlet Amisi had in her trailer tucked between the seats, along with a couple of magazines and some fast food loyalty tickets. She pulled it out. “Hey, dad,” she said, sitting up so she was leaning between the seats, “why are we going to New York instead of this place?”

He glanced at the pamphlet and his lip curled. “Don’t you worry about it,” he growled, looking back to the road. “The Institute is the best place for both of us. Trust me on that at least.”

“But there were three schools blown up in New York,” she said, climbing up to her seat. “Genosha” – she checked the pamphlet – “is an island. An island by Europe. Europe doesn’t blow up its mutants.”

He snatched the pamphlet from her. “Buckle,” he chided, pointing to the seatbelt before crumpling up the pamphlet. He only spoke up again after she clicked in. “I happen to know the ‘king’ of that rock,” he said. “Knew him before he’d given it a fancy name and got people to come live on it. He’s just as bad as the people who blow up kids.”

She stared at him. “What?”

She saw his face working subtly under his frown before he replied. “He’s tried to kill me. A lot. Stands for the exact opposite of what the Institute stands for.”

“So it’s like a feud,” Laura said.

He shook his head. “Not a feud. A stand-off, I guess. Just don’t trust the smiling faces and the pretty mutations. What the gene does isn’t pretty all the time, and people get broken by it.” He shook his head and took a breath, twisting his grip on the wheel a little. “I wouldn’t trust any place run by a man that’s done the things I’ve seen him do.”

The radio clicked over to intercom and a voice from another of the convoy of trucks came through. “Refueling up ahead. Second exit coming up.”

Logan responded to agree and started to merge toward the exit lanes. “Hey kid,” he said, “we can get something to eat if you’re hungry. Unless you just want the snacks your mom sent?”

Laura suddenly realized her stomach felt like a deflated balloon. “She packs dumb stuff like yogurt covered nuts. I’m starving.”

He chuckled. “Me too. I’m sure the others are hungry too.”

Once the trucks pulled in at the stop, Laura finally got a good look at their caravan. Three trucks, two other teams, but with two more men than necessary. She guessed it was their truck she and Logan were in.

Last out was a girl her age who she easily guessed was Ati. She looked like her mother. It made sense why Logan pointed out Amisi was the second wife. The boys all looked normal and alike, but clustered fairly close around their sister, with good feeling and slightly smothering affection.

Ati stole a glance at Laura and waved cheerfully.

Laura smiled back and Ati squished in to sit next to Laura at the diner table.

“I hope you like the jacket,” she said, her voice comfortably Canadian instead of accented like her mother’s. “It was my favorite for a long time. Where are you going?”

“New York,” Laura said, more curious than comfortable with Ati’s wide-eyed attention.

“We’re going to Maine,” she said. “They won’t tell me what we’re hauling, though. And that’s okay. That’s the boring part of trips like this. Want to see something cool?”

She took a plastic frog from her pocket and set it on the table. “It hops when you press the tab,” she said, grinning. “I know it’s just for little kids, but it’s really fun!” She pushed it over to Laura. “Go on, try!”

Ati acted like an elementary school kid, Laura thought, but she was likely old enough to be just about out of middle school. Still, she was pleasant enough and Laura humored her, giving the frog a try.

It leapt clear over Ati’s menu and hit one of her older brothers who promptly sent it hopping back.

While the toy made the rounds and orders were placed, the staff took notice of Ati. Laura saw it and wondered if she felt it.

That was the look Laura was used to getting. People looked at what things that stood out. Laura wasn’t sure what made her stand out, but she imagined it was everything. Her shortness, her little nose, her big feet, her flat chest. Any one of those could make a girl an outcast from the other girls. Though, she thought, it was more likely the rumors. Whether word of what she’d done at her first school actually made that far that fast or not, she still always wondered if that was why she got looks.

Only Ati was surrounded by her brothers and her dad. They sat her close to them and didn’t take any notice of the looks, so she didn’t either. She smiled easily and wasn’t prissy. She even laughed at a couple fart jokes from her brothers, which Laura typically took as a sign of good character.

Ati finally pushed at her youngest brother who sat between her and the end of the booth. “Get out, I have to go!”

He leaned against her shove, setting his feet hard so she couldn’t budge him, much to the amusement of the others. “Go? Go where? Home? What, are you gonna hitch hike?”

She threw her weight against him playfully. “No I’ve gotta peeeee!”

Their father chuckled. “Go on, let her out.”

Logan nudged Laura. “Do you need to go?”

Her face burned. “Dad.”

He backed off, but she got up anyway and followed a few steps behind Ati to the restrooms.

The looks followed Ati, but the hairs stood up on Laura’s arms as if they were looking at her.

She hurried in the bathroom, aware when Ati’s stall door closed and when she washed her hands.

On her own, Laura struggled to figure out why she was on edge, or even why she didn’t want Ati to go out into the restaurant without her.

When she did come out, she didn’t see where Ati had gone. She hurried out the door to see a worker had stopped Ati just a few steps out.

“So where did you get all this?” they were asking and gesturing to their own face in the areas where Ati had her fur. No doubt after asking something as lame as “so you’re a mutant, huh?”

“Family,” Ati said briefly. “Excuse me, I really should” –

“So is that dog or cat or what?” they pressed.

Laura saw the fascination on the one hand and the rudeness on the other. She walked up behind Ati and cleared her throat. “Hey,” she said, glad she butted in when she saw the grateful look Ati gave her, “you left me behind back there.”

She grinned. “Sorry.” She just barely glanced at the worker before taking Laura’s lead and walking off back to the table.

They weren’t followed and Laura only just realized her heart was pounding in her throat. “That happens a lot, I guess?” she asked.

Ati nodded. “Yeah. Usually the same questions. I don’t think most of them mean to be rude. Visuals aren’t too common.”

Laura just nodded, but when they sat down again at their table, every now and then a joke was one they could glance up, grin, and silently share.

Ati split off with her brothers after lunch and Laura waited for her dad in the cab of their truck while he talked with Mubarak Sr. and took a walk around to check the truck.

“So, can I drive?” she asked when he finally climbed in.

“Fat chance, half pint,” he said, firing up the truck and following the first truck out onto the highway.

“What was the talk about?” She couldn’t get used to him shaved. He didn’t look like himself, but he was already starting to whisker up again.

He was quiet until she wondered if he was going to answer at all. “We’re crossing the border on foot,” he finally said. “We’ll be handing the rig off to one of his boys at a stop a few miles from the border check. We’ll meet up with a friend of his and then cross on foot.”

She sat deep into the seat watching the back of the truck ahead of them. “We’re not going through a checkpoint, are we?”

He was quiet again for a long time. “I don’t like detectors.”

She turned on the radio when she finally decided not to press the issue, and she wasn’t about to change his station even if it was on a talk break.

\- “that it’s unlikely the bombings would happen again,” a host was saying. “The international response has been so quick.”

“Not so quick inside the US,” the male host responded. “But we finally have a released statement by the US Department of Health inviting any mutants fearful for their safety to seek treatment and refuge at their local hospitals.”

“This formal statement is awfully late, don’t you think, Terry?” the female host returned. “Within an hour after the attack, Graiton Creed” –

\- “That’s the human rights activist, for anyone following at home,” Terry said. “I’d have put my hockey money on his people for this kind of attack.”

“That’s the thing,” the female host continued. “Within an hour of the attacks, he was on international news calling for the arrest of the bombers. Do we have a clip of that?”

A recording played then, a voice Laura had heard several times from her newsfeed before Debra took away her phone data.

“This is a tragic thing all around, and not the way proud human beings get their message across. The perpetrators should be apprehended and held accountable. I expect – and I make no bones about this – I expect there will be swift and violent retaliation from the mutants.” There was a pause filled with sound of camera clicking from the press who were there in person. “It could be today,” Creed said, his voice heavy with warning, “it could be a week, it could be as long as a month or more, but we will see a significant surge in anti-human activity. After the patterns we’ve seen, we need to protect ourselves where the police aren’t equipped to do it for us.”

The recording cut off as if that were mid-sentence and the hosts came back on.

“Gosh that’s pretty scary to think about,” Terry said. “If they can’t handle some human-made bombs, what do they expect to do with a teenager with fire blasting out his hands?”

“Might be more concerned about offending a psychic,” the female host replied. “Seems to me we all better be working on how to be good neighbors to the folks that could have that much power” –

Logan reached over and changed the station to one that was playing music and turned it down to a murmur.

“Sorry,” Laura muttered, uncomfortable with the glowering look on his face.

He nodded at his bag at her feet. “Dig a cigar outta there, will ya?”

She did and handed it to him with his lighter. “Can we at least crack a window or something?”

He opened his own window a little before asking her to light for him. He settled with his first pull and took one of his long pauses. “Everybody’s gotta decide about this stuff for themselves,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you what to believe. Just saying something about what I think feels right at the moment.” He thought and spoke again. “There’s a whole lot less of us than they all wanna believe.”

Laura wasn’t sure she believed that. She’d lived in hope for years that there were at least half a dozen mutants at her school – whichever one she was at – that would suddenly manifest some power that made hers less strange.

“It seems like there’s a lot,” he said, “cuz we tend to find each other. That’s part necessity, and part beast stuff like you and me have. We stick together.” He glanced at her and Laura immediately thought of her concern for Ati even in the brief moments they spent going to and from the bathroom at the diner.

“But out there in the world,” he went on, picking his words carefully, “Professor Xavier says less than half a percent of people have the gene. Only a slice of that bunch have powers that actually do anything.” He gave a gruff little chuckle. “Imagine having the gene and the only thing you get is an extra knuckle in your finger?”

Laura got icked out thinking about it and it must have shown on her face.

He chuckled. “Yeah, well, you’ll see a lot worse where we’re going. Anyway, there aren’t that many of us, and I’m real sure the government already knows the names of all the ones that can do any damage,” he sobered a little and he said quietly, “even if they don’t know they should worry about them.”

“And what about the school?” she asked.

“Mutants only there,” he said.

She felt her stomach turn a little, suddenly wondering if that was actually a place she would belong.

“The professor brings in the ones that need protecting, from others or from themselves. Now he’s calling in all the ones he’s been working with from a distance.” He blew a cloud of smoke toward the window that sucked it out of the cab.

“And he called for me?” Laura asked, a twist of skepticism in her voice.

Logan kept his eyes on the road. “No. I did. And he’ll take you in like the rest.” He changed lanes with the rest of the convoy. “Who was your date with?”

Laura was watching a car just ahead of them with a bumper sticker like the one she’d seen on the pickup she’d wrecked. Her knuckles ached remembering, and she reached up to touch her hair, only then remembering it was not brown anymore. “What?” she asked, pulled back to the present.

“Your date,” he said again. “The date you had when I showed up. Who was it with?”

Laura sat back into her seat to where she couldn’t see most of the regular cars. “Nobody,” she said, realizing she meant it. Hugh was a wannabe at best, she realized. For all she knew, he had hate stickers on his junker car or on the bottom of his skateboard. “Nobody important.”

Her dad grunted and tapped ashes out the window. “You sure?”

She looked at him and pulled a face, crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out until he saw her and grinned. She grinned too, surprised she wasn’t really all that sad. “Just a dumb boy. Probably would have dumped me the second he found out I’m a mutey.”

“Hey. Mutant. And that wasn’t your choice,” he replied. “Good to be cautious, but there are normal people out there who aren’t terrible. They’re hard to find, but lately I’ve been betting there are enough of them to matter.” He glanced at her so she knew he wasn’t joking. “And you know what? Even just betting that, things don’t look so bad.”

“What about the bombing, then? How do you figure that with your bet?”

He thought a minute, but Laura wasn’t sure if that was thinking or just taking another draw of his cigar before putting it out for later. “People, human or not, attack for their own reasons. Thing about the institute… it pays to let the thinking people do the thinking, and the fighting people do the fighting. I’ve been wrong enough to know I’m not a thinker.”

Laura grinned a little at that, and he went on.

“But I do know this. If I was gonna blow someone up,” he said, “I’d make it look like someone else did it. And I’d probably stand in the middle of it just to be sure no one would think it was me.”

She thought a bit, confused. “So you think other mutants did it?”

He shrugged. “I think we’re not all on the same side, so there’s no telling. I just doubt the first view of things.”

Laura didn’t say much for the rest of the ride. She imagined, suddenly, a whole lot of angry people standing on opposite sides of a line, but that this wasn’t a clear view of things. The news she’d heard, the articles she’d read, the gossip of the kids at school all said attackers vs. victims where one group could be either or, depending on who told the story. Now things felt a bit more like a yelling match inside a mosh pit of people, mutant and human, still crushed together as people, no matter if they believed in each other’s humanity.

She wasn’t used to thinking that deeply about it. It gave her a headache.

A few miles from the border, they pulled off at a stop, handed the truck back to one of the brothers, and met up with a young man with a truck like the one they’d started out in.

“Brandon,” her father grunted in greeting, lobbing their bags into the truck bed. He climbed in the back too, jerking his thumb at the cab for Laura’s benefit.

She climbed in and cringed when she saw the young man in the driver’s seat had a right arm of metal and cables.

He turned to flash her a handsome, friendly grin. “Hey. You can call me Forge.” He offered his metal hand, which she was relieved to see was shaped and moved just like a real one.

She shook it and relaxed. “Laura.”

Logan shoved open the back window of the cab. “We’re not here to socialize,” he growled.

“I’m driving, okay? Geez, no need to get all pissy back there.” He revved the engine, one that clearly didn’t belong to the vintage chassis. “Keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times! Away we go!”

They drove the highway for a short stretch, then exited and in less than five minutes were winding down roads with no lights or paving. Laura didn’t have a clue where they were when Forge pulled off the road completely and shut off the lights.

“Open the glove compartment, would you, Laura?” he said brightly. She did and handed him the only thing she found in there. “That’s a good girl! Thanks.”

There was no moon, so she didn’t know what they were, but by his driving she guessed he’d packed something to help him see in the dark.

Neither of the men said anything. They didn’t make a single sound and, oddly, the engine barely did either. When he’d shut off the lights, Forge had apparently set the motor to a nearly silent hum.

Their silence more than any command told her to keep as quiet as possible during their stop-and-go off-road drive.

She heard her father gasp first, then he was pounding on the cab of the truck. Laura couldn’t see anything, but Forge looked out the driver side window and swore loudly, waking up the truck to roar around and away just as a dark shape came charging at them from the trees.

Someone, as difficult as it was to believe, hit the side of the truck with shattering force, but the angle deflected it toward the front.  Laura saw a solid outline of a hand grabbing the driver side mirror and caught a glimpse of impossibly long nails like claws scraping long furrows in the metal before losing grip.

If the ground weren’t already uneven, and if her adrenaline wasn’t revved up too, Laura might have guessed they’d run them over.

The truck lurched and ground over bushes and plowed through small trees at full volume. Laura saw flashlights and off to the side there were some bright enough to be headlights. “Lookout!” she yelled and Forge tore off the night goggles, slamming the gear shift around to the sound of the border guards’ shouts and megaphone sirens.

“Hold on to something!” he said, spurring the beast of a truck through what looked like a solid stand of trees.

Laura, for all her weight, was being flung around the cab. She grabbed hold of what she could, gripping the useless belt and handle on the door, but after they vaulted a boulder on her side, she scrunched down low, gripping the seat and bracing against the dashboard.

She’d never been to any of the big amusement parks in her life. She imagined this might be what a totally broken rollercoaster felt like, especially just after Forge told her to keep down. All four wheels left the ground for a moment, and during that moment that felt like a dozen the truck tilted nose-down. The engine went to its silent hum again and all the lights there were shut off.

They hit the ground, but Laura didn’t hear a crunch, just the hiss and squeak of the machine taking the impact and the momentary weightlessness of a truck bouncing to a landing.

By now Laura had folded herself up and was bracing under the glove box. The truck stopped motion completely and she heard a soft thud. It was solid dark, not even a moon, and it took a moment to realize Forge’s face was very close to hers. He’d flattened himself down across the front seats to keep out of sight and was breathing hard, his eyes wide and his grin both nervous and crazed with the car chase.

He covered his own mouth to further muffle his breathing and Laura did too, especially when she heard the guards and their car milling around above them. Their lights threw odd shadows and Laura held as still as possible, well after things went dark again and the voices faded off in opposite directions.

After both of them were breathing calmly again, Forge pulled out a phone and checked a map. “We’re not too far off base, but we’re gonna be late.” He darkened the screen again and sat up, looking at her. “You alright?”

Laura climbed back to her seat. “Banged up, but nothing serious. This thing still going to run after all that?”

Forge grinned proudly. “Are you for real? This may look like a rust bucket, but this is” – A hand slammed heavily against Forge’s window and he screamed, lurching away and backing Laura into the passenger window.

Logan’s face appeared then and he pounded on the window, his angry voice plenty audible through the glass. “What kinda driving was that, bub? You dumped me back there with everything else in the back!”

Forge eased off Laura and back to his seat. “He’s alive!” Forge grinned at Laura and gave a half-hearted, “Yaaaaaay.”

Logan had recovered their bags from where they’d fallen out, then had a rough time getting the truck back up the other side of the ditch. Laura got to sit at the wheel while her dad and Forge got behind to push until there was some traction for the beast truck in disguise to get on even ground again.

After a few minutes of careful, silent driving through the woods, she saw a light off to the right grow brighter and brighter before flashing in front of them and a glare of red disappear off to the left.

They’d found a road.

There were no lights in front or behind them so Forge pulled out into the lanes, leaving their lights off to take advantage of the dark. They kept the law of silence in force, for a while.

Finally, Forge flipped the lights back on and the engine rumbled back to a regular pitch that made it hard for Laura to hear what he said after that. “What?”

“I said the heat’s off now,” Forge smiled. He rapped on the window. “You alright back there?”

“I’m still mad at you,” Logan grunted.

She smiled, unclenching from the fear of crossing an international border illegally. “Hey, dad?”

“Yeah?” he answered through the window.

“Why couldn’t we just take the truck over? I mean… I’ve got papers, right?”

“Oh you’ve got em,” he said, firmly. “Only we’d attract attention from customs if the truck we were in weighed a few hundred pounds over what it’s registered for.”

She settled, then, and at the next rest stop, Logan climbed in the large cab with them for the rest of the drive.

They stuck to the highways, making it into Westchester and winding through the roads to Bayville, back out the other side.

Forge turned off the road and stopped at the corner of a large fence. “What the hell,” he muttered, pointing at where a plaque used to be. Laura saw where the screws went, but were gone now. “They took down the sign?”

Logan looked and frowned too. “Damn. Professor’s really trying to get off the grid, isn’t he?”

They buzzed in at a large gate and then stopped at another gate, passing through immaculately kept lawns and gardens. They could see construction equipment and piles of building materials around.

A man waited at the inner gate and opened it for them. Laura, at least, thought it was a man, but when they got close enough and stopped so he could greet them, she realized this was just a very tall very muscular boy a few years older than her.

“Piotr!” Forge grinned and clasped his hand through the window. “Long time, no see! I’m here to stay now, not just for a visit. What do you think of that?”

The boy smiled, a wide genuine grin that immediately made him a lot less scary. “I am happy to see you, Mr. Forge. Yes. It is good.”

“I’ve got a new kid and an old nuisance here on the old man’s orders,” he went on cheerfully. “Is he around?”

Piotr looked through the cab at Logan and then at Laura, and he had more of a smile for her than she expected. “Yes, the Professor. He is inside.” He kept his gaze on Laura. “Welcome.”

She just nodded as the truck rumbled forward again, toward the large gothic building whose plaque had not been removed. “Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters”

 


	7. Decided

Kurt wiggled around in the wheelchair until his broken tail rested comfortably in the seat with him. “I do believe I can walk.”

Dr. McCoy made a note on his chart while Heidi fussed with the breaks and the handles so she knew how to use them. “Not for a whole day, you can’t,” he replied. “Heidi will help you through classes, and you can keep her company too.”

“It’ll be fun!” Heidi smiled, turning the chair in a circle.

He grinned and held on. “Whoa!”

Hank looked up and Heidi immediately stopped. “Sorry,” she smiled at him, leaning on the chair.

“Your schedules are the same for now until things get sorted out on the school side of things,” he said, handing Kurt a packet of papers. “Between the two of you, I’m sure you’ll manage not to get too lost.”

Heidi was quietly pleased to have a consistent companion for that day, not that she didn’t know anyone in her classes. She was silently grateful Sarah, who had never quite warmed back up after Heidi busted up the forest fight club, was much younger than she seemed and wasn’t in the trimmed-down Junior class. The schedules had only just been hashed out and on a short list of teachers, so more classes would be available as instructors came back.

“The teachers will be finding those who set the bombs,” Kurt explained, quiet to keep their conversation private in the halls. “No one else seems to be trying.”

She was glad he caught on so quickly to her powers. It was nice he’d thought of that. “What do you mean?”

“Have you heard any news about the criminals being caught?” he asked, looking up at her. “We have much to contribute… more than most police forces.” She only caught a bit of his expression, one mixed with determination, pain, and rock solid faith. “This is what they do. It is what we do, when others cannot.” He seemed to catch on that she was looking at him and lightened up, giving her a grin with his pointed teeth. “Though, we are not all supposed to know that.”

She grinned down at him and got up in his face, hoping to cheer him. “Then you shouldn’t go telling people.”

“You know already,” he said. “Well, you know enough that it would make sense.”

Their class was only about 10 kids, and that was the whole of the 11th year class. Heidi already knew Kurt, Bobby, and Anna so thankfully it wasn’t all strangers. Kitty, apparently, was super smart and joined them for classes even though she was a year younger.

Heidi never thought she’d be somewhere even smaller than her school back home. After a week of more new faces flooding in, the student body topped out at around 150. A couple of kit buildings were up now as dormitories and classrooms, so getting Kurt out and across the lawn a few times for the different classes was a real treat.

She wheeled Kurt out of their last class of the day and met up with Anna, Bobby, and Kitty outside. Anna grinned at Kurt. “Powers class. You up for it?”

“I am supposed to attend, yes,” he said, “but the good doctor will be very upset if I participate.”

Bobby set the pace, walking slow so they’d all be on their way together. “Be nice to see everybody,” he said. “Kinda sucks we’re not all together like before.” He looked at Heidi and smiled. “Nice to have new faces, though. You’ll like powers class. Nothing like stretching out and letting loose after sitting in desks all day.”

“Don’t get on Wolverine’s bad side,” Anna advised. “He’s got his soft spots, but generally he’ll rip you a new one if he thinks you’re slacking off.”

Heidi recalled the name but not having ever seen him before. “And is he a teacher? Or just like a coach?”

“He teaches history,” Kurt explained. “His normal name is Mr. Logan.”

“He’s older than dirt,” Bobby said quickly. “He’s lived through a lot of it. And not just recent history, we mean waaaaaaaaay back.”

Kitty cleared her throat to butt in, adding, “He doesn’t look it, and it would be smart not to say anything about that.” She looked over at Anna. “Where has he been, though? He wasn’t here after the” – she paused and chose against referencing the bombings, Heidi guessed out of consideration for Kurt. “He kind of disappeared for a bit.”

“He was getting his daughter,” Anna replied, and Heidi thought she detected a little bitterness or jealousy in it. “Anyway, he’s back now and he’s gonna be pissed if we’re late.”

Heidi pushed Kurt along, not questioning when Bobby bit the bullet for them all and pressed the basement button for the blood sample, or when she heard them whoosh right past the usual stop at the medical sub-basement. The others were calm and content to chatter, so she kept pushing Kurt right into a large gym buried deep under the school.

“We can sit over there,” Kurt said, pointing to a spot against the wall with some materials piled up. The gym was scattered with things, set up in a challenging obstacle course, and a couple of the discarded blocks and ropes stood in for a useful bench.

Heidi sat and, after looking over the set-up and the terrifying man waiting there, realized he wasn’t what she expected when she heard Wolverine, but the more she took him in the more fitting it seemed.

“What took you so long?” he growled.

A girl, one who looked about freshman age, was adjusting an obstacle and came over to look over Heidi’s friends warily. She was already sweating and a little short of breath.

“This is Laura,” he said, answering a question they hadn’t asked yet. “She’s going to join us.” He pointed to one end of the course. “Start here,” he said, then pointed to the opposite end, “and get there. No touching the ground. Simple. Anna, show her how it’s done.”

Anna straightened and rolled her neck and shoulders to loosen up, then went at it with more stamina, flexibility, and creativity than Heidi had ever seen anyone show in P.E. class back home. The ROTC had some stuff like this, but that was cushy in comparison with safety nets everywhere – Anna took it on like a force of secret ninja fury… though a bit less gracefully than that. She fell once, but was only on the floor for a split second before getting right back on track.

When Bobby took his cue to go next, Kurt sighed, fidgeting in his chair. “This is not fair.”

Heidi tore her eyes from the most amazing displays of mutant powers she’d ever seen – which she could admit wasn’t saying much, since she’d never seen an elemental mutant as powerful as Bobby – and looked over at Kurt. “Bet you could do all this easy.”

He nodded, giving a proud grin. His tail tip even flipped a little. “Yes. This is play for children in the circus,” he said with a barely audible purr. “I am best at games like these.”

“YOU!”

Heidi nearly jumped out of her skin at a shout from Logan in her direction.

“You’re next,” he said.

“I’m what?” Heidi whispered, her heart suddenly beating like a tympani in her ears.

Kurt tried to say something, but Logan drowned him out.

“You’re not the one in a wheelchair. You’re still in class now, so you’re next!” He pointed at the starting point. “Start once Laura’s past the midpoint.”

Heidi hurried over, unsure what to do or say. She was less than half as capable as any of the others, but if this was child’s play for them, and if mistakes were allowed and powers were encouraged, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? She could do this, or at least give it her best try.

Up on the platform, she tried hard not to look down but look ahead, through the various ropes, pipes, platforms, and slopes to where Laura was struggling her way through.

Laura was just as new as Heidi, and Heidi worried about the clear strain of it on the younger girl. Of course, Laura looked and moved like she was much fitter than Heidi and that was worrying too.

She didn’t consider herself a vain person. She also didn’t consider her new school friends to be judgmental types. Oh but if there was any way not to make a fool of herself in front of them, she prayed she’d have the luck to manage it!

Once Laura appeared on the other end of the middle obstacle, Heidi leapt across the first gap just like she planned and had seen the others do.

She landed well, her miracle complete. Her confidence soared, as did her heart rate, but that was less important as she immediately turned to the next one, a set of ropes for crossing another gap. She’d seen the timing was important and she took the first but missed the swing to the second. Chickening out, she gripped onto her current rope, stranded between the platform and the second rope.

Her arms grew weaker and she grasped about in her mind for how to get it going again. Adjusting her grip and steeling herself, knowing she only had about a second of strength to hold on with one arm, she threw her other hand out and attempted making her powers help like Bobby’s had.

She did lose her grip on the rope, but only after being thrown clear over the next two obstacles. She didn’t know what she hit or grabbed at along the way, and after she landed everything was immensely fuzzy for a few moments, including her hearing.

Someone sat her upright and suddenly she felt a cold blast to her face that made her gasp and brought things back into focus.

“I was trying to tell you! She’s never done this before!” Bobby was yelling.

Heidi put together it was Kitty snapping her fingers in front of her face. “Heidi?! Heidi, focus on me. Show me you can focus. Look at me, okay?”

She did her best to keep Kitty’s face in focus and it was quickly getting easier.

“Doc’s gonna kill you,” Anna was saying, still only a blob behind Kitty’s head, but Heidi could at least grasp she was talking to Logan and not her.

Kitty met Heidi’s gaze and grinned. “Hey, you!” She looked over her shoulder. “She’s back, Kurt!” She looked back at Heidi and held up her finger, moving it back and forth, near and far from her face. “Keep your eyes there, just looking for good responses. Nothing too rattled in the brain box, right?”

Heidi smiled a little, but only when she realized nothing was broken. “No, just all the same screws loose.”

Kitty relaxed, relieved. “Well good. You sure gave us a scare! You stay right there until you feel good enough to stand. You got banged around pretty good!”

Heidi heard shouting still, and then a particular shout that both terrified and reassured her.

Hank pounded across the floor from the gym door. “HEIDI!”

She wanted to shrink down and disappear. His fur was flared up and he looked nearly twice as big, his eyes wide and searching, but when he saw her they shifted and so did his attention – straight to Logan.

“What were you thinking?!” he roared and, to Heidi’s surprise, Logan roared right back.

“I didn’t know! She’s in my class! All of them do the same thing – I’ve even got my girl here!” He threw an arm wide to indicate Laura’s general location, but he seemed a bit off balance from Hank’s reaction.

“She’s not here to fight crime or show off or whatever the hell you teach these kids to do! She’s here for her own safety and look what you did!” He bore his teeth and Heidi saw a flash of shock cross his face. He backed down a step and his fur settled a bit. “Look what you did,” he spat again and turned to Heidi, taking over for Kitty.

By the time he took a knee to examine her, he looked old and tired. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, really,” she said, holding his hands when he offered them to help her up.

“Go slow.” He helped her to her feet and relaxed more to see she just had some scrapes and a bruise on her hip from the fall. “Good,” he sighed, “good.”

Kurt, who Anna had wheeled closer, cleared his throat. “Doctor? We did try to tell him…”

Hank growled a little, but just took hold of Kurt’s chair and wheeled him along while walking Heidi to the infirmary. “You need a checkup. You both do.”

The next day, for powers practice, Hank met her at the elevator and took her to a separate room from the others. It was a smaller space with some household objects around – a few drinking glasses, blocks, a bowl or two, a ziplock of sand, etc.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said with the tone of someone who’d practiced their lines.

“You didn’t do anything,” Heidi replied. “I wish you hadn’t locked yourself up in your lab, though. It was pretty lonely after dinner.”

He looked at her with surprise since she’d successfully thrown off his script. “I – Well, I had things to do. Some evidence came in that needed analyzing.” He gestured for her to stand at a table in the center of the room. “I feel better about things when I get work done.”

Heidi leaned on the table. “Was it evidence about the bombings?”

He nodded, but wouldn’t say more. “You surprised me yesterday. I think you surprised the others, but I hadn’t expected you’d do something like you did in there… not after what you’d told me about your powers. What happened?”

“I tried to do like Bobby did,” she held up her hands, “with these. I didn’t expect ice, obviously, but I was going to fall from the rope anyway so I thought I might as well try. That’s what the exercise was for, wasn’t it? To try?”

Hank grunted and set a plastic bowl on the table and poured some sand in it. “That was a warm up. It wasn’t a test.” He reconsidered and added, “Well, it was a test for Laura, but the others could do that course without breaking a sweat.”

Heidi felt her face burn in embarrassment. That sure put her performance in context. “Oh.”

“What you need,” he said, “is a chance to see where your powers are and how to use them safely. Less chance for you to hurt yourself and others. Ideally, all the new students will get this chance. You clearly manipulate the air, though typically in such a way that produces sound, so that gust that moved you on the course was a surprise. Did it feel natural?”

Heidi shook head. “Kind of forced. I really didn’t want to fall, especially not in front of everyone.”

“Don’t think about ‘everyone’,” he said. “We’ll work a little today on your resonance. That’s the most dangerous thing about your powers. The most dangerous thing about sound is exceeding what’s safe for human ears and objects.”

“Like glass in car windows,” Heidi said, straightening up.

He nodded. “So we’ll work on your control of that. If you can reach frequencies of regular things, you’ll be able to check yourself before anything or anyone gets damaged.”

“And if someone comes after me or someone else, I can keep them from doing anything awful?”

“Where is this coming from? I thought we’d been through this?” Hank frowned. “Don’t use your powers against people. That’s not what we stand for here.”

Heidi nodded quickly. “I know, I know. And I’m not saying we should. I’m just… Well, if there’s a need, or an emergency, I’d rather be able to help. I don’t want to be the victim, or a bystander.” She thought of what he’d said in the gym, something that had nagged at her all night when she hadn’t been sleeping anyway. “Am I really that different from the others?”

He looked at her directly. “You don’t have to be like them. What”- he paused to collect his thoughts – “What we do here, what we don’t tell the others, is for their own safety.” He drew his lip back a little in disgust, but not at her. It seemed more to be at himself. “You know more than I wanted you to already… You have a right to as normal a high school experience as you can get.” He shook his head and refocused, tapping the bowl of sand. “This is going to help with that. See if you can find what frequency will make this sand resonate. There are a lot of densities in these grains, so this should be a good start. Just make some of them move.” He put earplugs in with a small smile and gestured for her to begin.

The lesson was a lot less fun than she imagined.

Afterward she went to check on Kurt and found him and Bobby in Kurt’s room, which was just up one floor from Heidi’s in the main house. The dorms had been finished in record time, and she now didn’t have to share her plush room. Neither did the boys, at least not yet.

They both looked up and smiled when she came in.

Bobby had cards and Kurt was apparently doing tricks with them. Bobby grinned. “Hey you! How was your class with the doc?”

She was used to guys as friends. She’d hung out with her brothers’ friends for years and had grown up with the neighbor boys working in the dairy. “Not nearly as fun as yours,” she said, pulling over the chair from Kurt’s desk to sit and watch.

Kurt lost interest in the cards. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how to say this without being mean about Pops…” She reached around for ways to say what she needed to say nicely, but came up empty. Blunt would have to do. “He doesn’t want me on the same level as you guys… Not that I’m anywhere near that, but you – you all are prepared for anything. If someone needs help, you’re ready and able and definitely not stuck standing by. You’re like heroes. You’re not even ‘like’ heroes – you are heroes. I’m” – she caught herself before she said ‘a pudgy girl from Wisconsin who knows more about the south end of a cow than anything else’. Giving them more of a reason to think that didn’t seem smart.

Both seemed to understand anyway.

“There is a saying in my circus,” Kurt said, tentatively, “and my English version may not sound right… but it goes: learn to fall and you have mastered the king of tricks. Fall safe, I mean.” He smiled nervously.

Bobby filled in the gaps. “He means none of us got where we are overnight.”

“I did,” Kurt looked at Bobby in confusion, “on a plane.”

Heidi giggled and Bobby rephrased. “I meant we practiced and worked hard at it. You get leaner and stronger and fail a lot. I’ve been here for years and started out a clumsy kid. Anna doesn’t have physical powers, and she started this stuff when she was really a kid. Kitty, well, Kitty’s a natural at just about everything she tries so don’t measure against her.”

Somehow that wasn’t encouraging and Heidi just leaned back in the chair. “Right.”

“Listen,” Bobby said, “I go running in the morning. Did you want to come with me? It’ll be a start and we can, y’know, hang out a little more?”

She sat up. “Really? You’d be okay with me coming along? I’m no sprinter,” she said quickly, “so I don’t want to slow you down.”

He grinned. “Psh. Don’t think about it. It’ll be fun. It’s not like we haven’t noticed you’re already an early riser. Just don’t be late. I get going before breakfast, so how does 6:30 sound?”

“That sounds late compared to home,” she smiled.

“Good! We’ll meet up on the back porch and get some time in.”

She got up, cheered by the idea. “I’ll be there.” She listened to the clock downstairs chime the hour. “I’ve got homework, so I’ll turn in. See you then!”

As she left, she heard something odd and peeked back around to corner to see the two boys playing a rapid-fire game of rock paper scissors. Kurt was very intent but still losing every round. She headed to her room to get her assignments done and dig up some workout clothes. Boys, in her experience, were very weird.

After a week, Heidi had hoped for more success. Bobby, and Hank when he found out she took up jogging, told her this was a long-term investment and any progress was worth celebrating, but it was difficult to get excited about gasping marginally less than she used to after a mile. Bobby also pointed out muscle confusion was the fastest way to results, so that second week he started to put obstacles for her to go through on their run.

“Snow wall!” he shouted cheerfully, blowing one up like it was nothing to him.

Heidi put in a kick of speed and struck a pose on her way through the thin wall so it left an imprint for a second before it fell.

He laughed. “Ten points!”

“I got,” she huffed a little, settling back into the normal rhythm, “fifteen for the last one!”

“Your last one was more creative,” he shot back. “Need a water break?”

She nodded and slowed to a stop, fishing her bottle from the backpack he had on. There was a group behind them and she pulled him off to the side. He couldn’t hear them coming yet, but this was a common occurrence and he let her haul him around by the backpack straps.

Heidi stiffened a little and he noticed. “What is it?”

She just turned away from the road so her flushed face and sweaty curls were less visible as the group of four girls in tight bright jogging suits came around the corner of the path.

Small schools, Heidi discovered in those first few weeks, were all the same. She had hoped this one would be different. It was, as far as most of the newbies all started on the same level, but it didn’t stay that way for long.

This group looked like every other popular clique in her primary, junior, and high school. It also looked like its rival group, led by Marrow and populated mostly by visuals.

Heidi counted herself lucky to be a “main house kid”. That way she only heard about the Pretties’ late-night makeover sessions and truth or dare games, so she wasn’t among the normal girls being routinely excluded from them for the sake of establishing an elite.

At the head of the girl side of the Pretties group, the one jogging up the path, was Trisha. Heidi didn’t know much about her, except that she could glow and did so beautifully… especially in areas that got the boys gossiping.

Trisha was in their grade, as was one of the other girls who had mild elemental control over plants. The rest were mainly 8th and 9th year girls, between 14 and 15 years old.

Heidi made it a point to sit behind and away from Trisha at any opportunity. Thankfully Anna also enjoyed making faces at the popular girl’s comments, so Heidi wasn’t by herself in disliking her. Anna was just better at it.

“Bobby!” Trisha called, waved, and jogged over with a bounce to her step. “Imagine seeing you out this early? That slush back there was you, then?”

Heidi didn’t want to look. She was sure Trisha was some kind of distance runner. She was everything else, it seemed.

“It was snow a bit ago, and it’s not much of a coincidence,” he said. “I’ve been running this early longer than you have.” He waved at her cohorts and they gleefully waved back.

Trisha stepped between him and them. “Just following a good example. Maybe you and I could” –

“Thanks,” he said suddenly, “but I’ve got a running partner. We’re going just fine, right Heidi?”

Heidi looked at him in surprise, but found herself smiling. “Yeah. We’re doing just fine.”

He held out his hand for the water bottle and took a swig before putting it back in the backpack. “Let’s cut across through the woods for a bit. It’s a shortcut I know.” He nodded briefly at Trisha. “Have a good run.” He turned his back on them and Heidi kept pace as they headed into the woods along the path.

Heidi wasn’t sure what to say. It seemed too surreal.

After a few seconds, presumably when he was sure he wouldn’t be heard, he asked, “You don’t like them much, do you?”

“Not much, no,” she said, focusing on not tripping on roots.

“Me neither,” he replied. “Part of what I liked about this place was it wasn’t like Baywood. We had all the same drama at school, but when we came back here, it was home. I liked leaving the fake people and popularity contests behind.”

“Why would that matter much?” she asked. “No offense, but you’d be homecoming king if we did that here.”

“Yeah? Cool.” He grinned at the compliment and she couldn’t help smiling with him. “Still, though, there’s people who fight for it, and there’s people who’ve just got it.”

That sounded a lot like something her brother Clyde would say. True, but playfully conceited and a humblebrag she loved to hate.

“Pop!” she giggled.

He looked at her, confused. “What?”

She shot him a grin. “That’s the sound of your head when it gets too big. So watch it!”

He blinked in surprise, then busted up laughing until they both had to stop so he could have a turn catching his breath.

On the day Kurt was allowed to walk to his classes (and he did very well) Heidi reported to Hank again for her lessons. It still stung to be away from her friends, but she hoped to convince her over-protective Pops to let her work on something more useful than making glass wobble but not break, and everything from marbles to metal rattle.

He was waiting for her, wearing earbuds and bent over a laptop.

She came over to see what he was looking at, and leaned on his large furry arm. “Hey,” she said, smiling when he looked over at her.

He didn’t jump in surprise, though he did give a small start. Once he saw her he calmed down and took the earbuds out. “Ah. You’re here. How have your workouts been? Better? Easier?”

“A little,” she said. “This is sound equipment. What are the recordings of?”

“Crowds,” he said. “Crowds and phone calls.” He sat up a little straighter and took a second to collect his thoughts. “Heidi,” he said slowly, “I know you’ve been frustrated with our lessons… You’ve been very good at them so far, despite the occasional complaint.”

She wished she hadn’t complained now, but all she could do at this point was look repentant.

“I’ve come up with a few new skills for you to work on,” he said, “but I want to stress to you the same thing the others have to know to do what they do.”

Heidi stared at him, her eyes wide. “What is it?”

He looked her in the eye. “We can do things that make normal humans very uncomfortable. They’re right to be afraid of us, if we use what we have against them. The only thing between us and evil is our choices, so however we use our powers” – he paused to fix her with an intense look that sent a ripple through her muscles under her skin, stronger even than goosebumps on top – “we must never use them cruelly, selfishly, or recklessly. People can always be hurt. If one of us lashes out, we bear the consequences together.” He frowned sadly. “That’s the way it is. Do you understand?”

Heidi nodded, careful not to do it too fast in case he thought she was taking it lightly.

He seemed satisfied and nodded back. “Good. I have here several recordings. We’re going to go through them and work on your listening. Let me know what’s easy and what’s challenging while you pick out the different voices and ambient sounds.” He had a notebook out and clicked a pen to take notes. “This should give us some guidance before really pushing your ability to isolate and analyze sounds.”

Heidi grinned and sat up straight, eager to get started as she imagined she was playing spy and reporting back secret information back to headquarters.

That was difficult considering the recordings were from a busy train station and the work quickly got tedious.

“Man,” she yawned after detailing the forty fifth individual voice from the same two seconds of recording, “baritone. Probably a singer once. He’s on the phone with someone, talking about hiding dogs’ pills in a hotdog.” She was leaning on the table leaning her chin on her hand. “That doesn’t work, y’know. My dogs always spit them out. Grinding them up works better.”

Hank turned and gave her a withering look over the rims of his reading glasses. “Are you done?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Has anyone tried to put your meds in a hotdog? Wouldn’t fool you, would it?”

He blinked and closed the laptop. “You’ve gone loopy. We’re finished, I think.”

At the prospect of being finished, she brightened up. “Aw, but that was funny!” she grinned. “Come on.”

He just snorted a little and rolled the earbuds up with surprising dexterity considering his massive hands.

In the quiet she seized a chance to ask something she’d been itching to ask. “Do we know who did it yet?”

He frowned as he finished with the wires. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Is anything happening, though?” she pressed. “Everyone’s wondering. I mean, everyone who knows we’re trying to find out.”

She knew she shouldn’t ask. She knew he wouldn’t tell her anything compromising, but she’d been having nightmares. Kurt had too. It’d been nearly three weeks and the bombing had all but disappeared from the major news networks – no resolution at all. Just like Kurt had said.

He was quiet as he closed the laptop and gathered his notebook. “We have a few leads,” he said, finally. “That’s more than we had. And I promise, we’re pursuing them to the best of our ability.” He helped her off her chair and back out to the hall toward the elevator. “If Anna asks,” he added, “Remy is a real asset to the effort. I know she didn’t expect she’d have to share him right after he got here. Would you tell her that much for me?”

Heidi stopped short of the elevator. “What do you mean? Aren’t you coming up?” She saw in his face he was about to say no and she flushed angrily. “You haven’t been upstairs all day! You can’t just stay here all night too. Just… Can’t you just come up for dinner? We can walk outside? It’s not all that cold. I’ll wear my warmest coat and you can get some fresh air?”

He wavered a moment and almost said no again.

She tried to mimic his look from before, the important one from his speech.

He smiled a little. “Alright. But I do have to get some work done after. Dinner and a little short walk.”

Hank did come up and it was very nice to have him around, but he went right back to seclusion the next day and Heidi couldn’t get him upstairs again. She came back up from her lesson with him, alone, with nagging hunger rattling through her guts.

The food at XI was east coast food, light meals and healthy veggies. She lied to herself, saying she didn’t miss the whole milk, Wednesday doughnuts, and quality burgers with fresh local beef and cheese. Cheese. Heidi rubbed her stomach, hoping that would help silence it.

She’d noticed she had more energy, and that her clothes were starting to feel loose. That was a start in the right direction. She resolved to eat a bit smarter, rather than just less, so she ditched the tail end of the cafeteria line and went to the house kitchen instead.

The music was another plus to this plan. Someone had a great playlist of new songs going, as well as a not-too-terrible sing-along in progress.

When Heidi walked in, she found Kitty and Ms. Kate singing along to Kitty’s mobile speaker, veggies all over the island and decorative little cookies cooling on racks.

Kate ran her knife expertly through carrots, turning them into perfect snack sticks while Kitty scooped and bagged them. In between, Kitty checked on a couple of pans on the stove that were giving off ridiculously good smells.

Kate smiled to see Heidi and waved her in. “Hungry?”

Kitty grinned too. “We’re meal prepping.”

Heidi came over to see what a production line they had going. “Yeah, that smells really good! Is this what we’re having at the cafeteria tomorrow?”

Kitty made a face. “Psh. No. This is mostly mine for the week. I’m vegetarian.”

“We’re not in a position to buy meals for all needs,” Kate said, turning the volume down for easier conversation. “But the kitchen is open and we keep stuff around for making anything anybody could need.” She smiled at Heidi. “Couldn’t get the doctor out of the basement tonight?”

Heidi pulled up a stool and took a cookie when Kate pointed them out. “No… It worked yesterday, but not today. He’s kind of preoccupied tonight. It could be serious.”

“Doc’s always preoccupied,” Kitty said. “He’s big on his work.”

Kate looked up at Heidi. “I’m curious… What do you think of the girls in your class?”

Heidi stopped mid-chew, both because she remembered she’d made a resolution to eat better just a few minutes before and was now eating a cookie, and she wasn’t sure if Kate was looking for good comments or dirt on her classmates. “What?”

Kitty took a pan off the heat and gave the pot a stir. “We were talking about bullies,” she said. “I wouldn’t be in here cooking on a weekday if someone hadn’t put bacon in everything I made this weekend.”

Heidi’s gut clenched uncomfortably. “They didn’t!”

Kitty turned around and nodded, clearly trying to keep her temper in check. “Not just on top. Raw bacon strips.” She mimicked picking up and dropping the meat into a pot. “Plop. Right in it. Forget not being vegetarian, it wasn’t even sanitary after that!”

“We don’t encourage that behavior,” Kate said, deftly chopping the ends off a couple of carrots with a sharp snap. Her phone rang and she looked down. “Oh. I was expecting this. Are you alright on your own, girls?”

Kitty nodded. “Thanks, Ms. Kate! I’ve got it from here.”

“I’ll be back to pack up the cookies when they’ve cooled.” Kate took her phone and left to answer it.

Heidi leaned on the island to steal a carrot stick rather than another cookie. “Do you think it was Trisha?”

“Could be,” Kitty agreed, “though it seemed pretty juvenile. The middle schoolers were swarming the place the day it happened, so it could have been a bunch of them too.” She looked at Heidi, confused. “Why would they do that to someone? I mean, was it me? I didn’t think I’d done anything to deserve that.”

Heidi shrugged and shook her head. “I’m sorry all the same.” After a moment of quiet while Kitty bagged up a few more carrot sticks, Heidi glanced toward the door just to make sure Kate was still on her phone call down the hall. She sat up closer to Kitty. “Could you tell me what you had to do to get on your team?”

Kitty stared at her. “What, you mean to do things outside school? I thought you weren’t big on that?”

Heidi shook her head. “No, but I’m sure there’s something I could do outside of hurting people. The team does more than just that. I know it’s not something they’re actually recruiting for, but I just wondered… how did you get in?”

She thought about it a second. “Well, it’s different now… And there isn’t a proper name for it, but Bobby’s been calling it getting certified. Like field certified. Generally, you’ve got to be able to take care of yourself when someone or something is trying to kill you.” She caught Heidi’s gaze and sobered. “And I’m not being funny, I mean it. It’s ugly out there. They don’t pull punches.”

Heidi felt a quiet chill and sobered too. “Right. Pops hasn’t gone into much detail. I just get the feeling he doesn’t want me in all that.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Kitty said, relaxing. “If my parents knew, they wouldn’t either. And none of us get asked to do anything unless the Professor thinks our powers will be important to the mission. Kurt did a rescue before school started, since things were supposed to be stealthy and he’s good with kids. Anna’s all pissed Remy’s been called up to help investigate this bombing thing, but from what she said, he was already doing that kind of thing for the Professor in Louisiana.” Kitty shook her head incredulously. “Really, he’s pretty amazing to watch. Awful scary what he can do, but he’s a riot. Anna’s lucky.”

Heidi nodded and got up from her stool. “Can I help?”

Kitty beamed. “Only if we can turn the music back on!”

That night, Heidi did manage a couple of hours’ sleep, but fell awake again around 11pm. She got her phone out and scrolled through her voicemail. Her brother left her a few messages to help with her homesickness and she knew them by heart but listened to her favorites over and over.

“Hey kiddo! I know this is hard for you, but we’re all really proud. Listen to this when you can’t sleep, okay? Here, the mic isn’t too good, but I’m going to get some of people snoring to help.”

First, the dog.

Then her dad, with her mom’s calm breathing behind.

After that, each sibling, including Clyde as he narrated what they all looked like before holding the phone out to record.

She was almost dozing off again when she heard Kurt’s phone ring and him rustling around in his room above her. She shut off her phone and listened deeper, catching chatter and the rush up and down of the elevators. Heidi grabbed a robe and got outside in time to catch Kurt at the stairs. “What’s happened?” she whispered, following him.

He looked worried at her presence, but didn’t object. “I do not know yet. The team is back, I think. Be very quiet.”

Heidi grasped his hand and the sound of their steps disappeared. It was easier to muffle noise with contact. “Quiet as a church mouse,” she said, and kept pace with him all the way to the sub-basement elevators.

The doors opened to the infirmary, full of teachers and several faces Heidi hadn’t seen in awhile. Remy was there, holding up Scott who had a massive bloodstain on his leg. Jean and Hank took over looking after Scott and the Professor wheeled to Remy immediately. “What did you get?”

Remy produced several crumpled handfuls of papers from his coat, and took a pocket camera from his boot. “Couple pictures,” he said. “Not enough, but a few. We got in fine, but somethin’ tipped’em off. I caught up what I could off the desks.”

Kurt jumped in at an unspoken order from the Professor and took the papers and camera down a hall Heidi had never been down, moving quickly and purposefully.

She wished he’d stayed because now she didn’t know what she was supposed to do.

While looking around for something she could help with, she noticed the Professor looked haggard and worn. He was more pale than usual and he looked like he hadn’t been sleeping.

He was still all focus. “Are you alright?” he asked, looking Remy over.

“Shot caught me in the arm,” he said. “Don’t think it hit home.” He turned to look at it like he hadn’t given it much thought. “Nah,” he said and shook his head, “just nicked me.”

The professor frowned. “Heidi.”

She came over, unsure it was a good thing to be noticed down there. She still didn’t have real clearance. “Yes?”

“See to Remy, please. Take him to Hank and help him with Scott as well. Remy, as soon as you’re patched, get to control and tell us what we’re looking at with the photos.” He left immediately, driving down the way Kurt had gone.

Heidi didn’t like the wild look in Remy’s eyes and got him to look at her before trying anything. “Are you really okay?”

He looked at her and took a very careful breath. “Mostly. Things went all sour fast.” He fell into step as Heidi led him to Hank. “We found our marks,” he said, answering her question before she felt it right to ask. “Followed a couple’a them small town gang leaders that did the bomb buildin’. They was meeting with some slimy types in perfect suits.” He rubbed his forehead and flinched since he used his sore arm. “Felt like one’a them ‘good ole boy’ clubs. More money than anyone got a right to, with no one t’say no.” He pulled himself back to the present, realizing he was on his way to a tangent. Heidi saw some signs of shock, but he was holding up well. “All we meant t’do was get out what it was they had going.” He gave Heidi a hollow glance. “What kind of people think it’s okay t’blow kids up and still call themselves ‘friends of humanity’? How’s doin’ that human at all?”

A chill ran down Heidi’s back.

“And they were the ones that tried to blow up Kurt?” she asked, wanting to stop so she’d have more time to ask questions.

Remy shrugged. “Thing is… That don’t seem the case. I don’t think they’re the ones, even though they were busy celebratin’ it. All those little gangs, they got attention for makin’ and settin’ the things, but they sure did a lotta introductions. Felt more like the devil was runnin’ a meet’n greet rather than a business meetin’.”

Bobby poked his head out from one of the infirmary rooms. “Heidi? What are you doing here? Never mind. Doc’s gotta do some cutting to get the slug out of Scott’s leg. Jean’s in here, she’ll deal with Remy.”

Heidi helped Remy inside and assisted like she had with Hank that first night. She fought hard to imagine the torn skin and messy flesh as patching up a cow hide, but there was Remy wincing at the pull of the thread through him.

This time she knew him. When she’d helped Hank patch up his leg, Hank was right there and it was a demonstration, not a familiar face with a bleeding arm. She could almost hear the crack of the gun that shot him, and then thought of the damage a bullet through the thigh could do.

She, Bobby, and Kurt all got passes out of their first and second classes of the day, though for the nightmares Heidi had made the additional rest time useless. She slept, but not well.

On top of the homesickness, she dreamed of angry men in suits with guns, broken flesh and people bleeding. She always woke with explosions. They were always unexpected, never safe, and she was always in the center. It was like she would spontaneously combust, hurting everyone around.

Bobby sat near her for the rest of classes that day, but she took a solo run in the evening to make up for missing her morning with him.

On her way back, she saw Remy, Piotr, and Laura out on the lawn. It looked like they had a couple of dummies set up for boxing practice.

They weren’t the only ones taking advantages of a nice evening. The gardens and yard were lit for after-hours sports. There was a soccer game going on nearer to the dorms, and the basketball court was a popular spot too. Heidi saw Trisha glowing away among her friends, seated in a good spot to watch the basketball players.

She jogged over to her friends while Piotr was showing Laura how a good stance could make her punches stronger.

Remy smiled to see her. “Bonsoir, Biquet!” he said cheerfully. “You were my angel last night. Feelin’ just fine now. You get sleep enough?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, enough. You?”

“Not too big a fan of pills,” he said, “but it was nice t’be out quick. Didn’t even dream. Stuff like that don’t let the nightmares in.”

Heidi looked at him, unsure if he knew how relatable his comment was.

“You wanna join?” he asked. “I’m givin’ close combat tips.” He grinned. “We’re just funnin’, though, if anyone comes askin’!”

She regarded the dummy and the haymakers Laura delivered that knocked it back and forth.

Remy noted her hesitance. “Not your flavor, Bichet?”

Heidi frowned. “No, that’s not it. Show me how? Self-defense, right?”

He nodded. “Could say that. Jus’ basics for now, yeah? Helps if you enjoy tryin’ somethin’ new.” He helped her put on some gloves. “Laura can scrap, like Anna,” he explained. “I don’t expect you’ll fight like her.”

Heidi relaxed a little. “Good. I don’t know if I could hit anybody like that.”

Remy chuckled. “Nah. Fightin’ is confidence. Think of this. You’ll know what to do come anythin’ bad. On top of that, if y’look like y’know what you’re doin’, you’ll scare anyone good. That’s half the battle.”

“What’s Piotr working on?” Heidi asked.

Piotr heard and looked down at her with a small smile. “I am not fast. I hit very hard, but I am not quick.” He pointed to Remy. “Our friend here is very very quick.”

“And I told ya,” Remy replied, “you can get quicker. It’s technique. You’ll get it.”

Heidi paid attention and Remy was an adept teacher. He got her throwing simple combinations at the dummy and, as long as she thought of it as a dummy and not a person, she found she liked the rhythm of the punches and the different tones of her gloves hitting the padding. High, low. Right, left. Jab, swing. Strong, light.

“Y’strike with some art in it,” Remy praised.

Laura was winded and took off her gloves. “Why would anyone want to hit soft?” she said, sitting down on the grass. It was fall, the grass was crispy with cold and patchy, but snow wasn’t due for weeks. The workout was plenty to keep them all warm.

Piotr looked down at her, and Heidi stopped to listen. “Fighting is not about being stronger than the other person,” he said. “It is about avoiding more fighting.”

Heidi stared. “What?”

Remy nodded. “He’s right. My ole daddy used to say the best fight is one you don’t start. If you can get ‘em to back down before anyone gets hurt, you win.”

“But if they do not back away,” Piotr said, “and the cause is right, then you fight.”

Laura laid down to catch her breath more and cool off. “So scare them off?”

Remy chuckled. “You gotta get a little bigger before you scare anybody. Them claws are a start, but you gotta know what you’re doing with” –

Heidi heard the screech before them. She heard it when it was still just a shift in tone of voice from a couple of girls at the basketball court. She heard a shove and a rip and then the screech that made her friends look up.

By then Heidi was halfway to the court.

By then the crowd at the court was tightening into a knot with Trisha and a couple of underclassmen visual girls going at it like furious cats in a pit.

The others were right behind her. Piotr, with his long stride and better fitness, hit the crowd first and parted them but when he saw the girls scrapping he suddenly wasn’t sure how to pull them apart.

Laura, crowded up close behind him, ducked around and yanked them apart. Since the two younger girls were on the offensive, Laura could only grab one at a time while keeping Trisha at a distance. Whoever Laura grabbed would just cheer on the other and join the fight as soon as she was let go.

“STOP!” Laura roared, but it barely made it over the cheering and the yelling.

In all Trisha’s scratching, clawing, and hair-pulling, she caught hold of Laura’s ponytail and yanked to get within reach of the other girls.

All bets with Laura were off. It was good they didn’t hold still like the dummy or some of her punches would have actually hit home.

Heidi watched in terror, hearing the chaos multiply. She saw Remy trying to haul Laura away and get between the fighting girls. He was having marginally better success.

Heidi concentrated and put one hand down toward the ground and the other in the air. She directed a massive bass boom downward, knowing the crush of people would keep the sound in and focus it on the fighters who, she hoped, would be disrupted. With her upraised arm she sounded a loud siren alarm toward the main building, calling for help or at least some authority other than Remy and Piotr who were only seniors after all.

The downward blast did its job, though it surprised the crowd and was a bit too strong on the fighters in the middle. All of them, including Remy, were physically stunned, covering their ears belatedly and put off balance.

The crowd heard the alarm she made, and several on the fringes slipped away to avoid getting caught encouraging a fight.

Heidi didn’t see Hank and Kate arrive until they broke through the far side of the crowd. She stopped her siren.

Kate, usually pretty cuddly and understanding toward the students, was livid. “Who’s involved?” she demanded, rather than ‘who started it?’ None of them were getting off easy.

The girls pointed at one another, all talking – well, shouting – at once.

“She’s been on us since” –

“They just up and jumped me when” –

“She told us we wouldn’t get in trouble and” –

“Do you know what she did to” –

Hank turned on his teacher voice. “That’s enough!”

They went silent, refusing to look at one another while Remy and Piotr shooed the rest of the onlookers away.

Kate looked at Laura. Heidi noticed they were about the same short height. “How involved are you in this? These two are from your class, aren’t they?”

Laura made a face. Hers was already normal while the others’ faces were still red from slaps, scratches, and punches. “I tried to break it up!”

Kate eyed her, clearly not fooled by the half-truth. “Your father will deal with that. Did you see who started it?”

Laura growled under her breath before answering, this time with the full truth. “We were way over there when it started. We didn’t know it was going on until Heidi took off over here like a bat out of hell.”

Hank looked at Heidi and was quiet for a second before asking, “Do you have any insights?”

She wasn’t quite sure what he wanted, but she remembered the train station recording. “Hold on.” She thought back and combed her memory to just before she ran over. With her hands in front of her, palms facing each other and close to her chest so it could direct the sound out where they could hear, she reproduced what she heard.

It wasn’t much beyond Trisha saying she was getting up to go get a coat and a couple of whispers she amplified between the two girls.

“There she goes.”

“Come on.”

Heidi replayed through the shove, the rip, and the start of the fight.

She then lowered her hands and pointed to the long tear at the shoulder of Trisha’s shirt. “I’m guessing one of them grabbed her by the sleeve, but … well, that’s a guess.”

Heidi thought she saw a smile cross Hank’s face, but it didn’t stick around.

He looked to Kate. “Did you need help getting them back?”

“Yes, please. Come on, girls. We’ll be discussing this at length.”

The teachers took the offenders back to the main house, presumably the same as being taken to the principal’s office, and Heidi realized she was really tired.

“Nice work!” Remy grinned at her. “Lookit you, dealin’ it out! Didn’ know you could do that – replayin’ stuff.”

Heidi tapped her temple. “Good memory. Usually.”

Laura was left behind, though she wasn’t happy. “Dad’s gonna kill me,” she muttered. “Then he’ll bring me back so I can clean up the mess.”

Piotr patted her head. “Yes. It is a lesson to be learned.”

“Let’s not think too hard on it,” Remy said. “I know where t’get some ice cream that’d be just perfect for a couple heroes and a couple recovering outlaws.” He winked at Laura and took hold of both girls’ arms, steering them along. “Come on, Piotr!”

Heidi realized they were headed for the back shed. “Bobby hides his ice cream back there.”

Remy didn’t slow down. “Sure does! And he got good taste.”


End file.
